.

Outcast /

CLAUDE MCKAY Friendship House, a Catholic lay organization in Harlem: He began to work at
Friendship House and, after moving to Chicago, worked, for the Catholic Youth
1889-1948 Organization. He [Link] Catholicism: in.19,44, and died inChicago four years
later. • . • :•. • ,l.\n- »V*»«-«
One of his biographers aptly calls Claude McKay, a lifelong wanderer, a "sojourner" The text of Moscow is from Selected Poems (1953); all other texts are from Harlem
in the Harlem Renaissance. A Jamaican by birth, he did not become an American Shadows (1922).
citizen until 1940; he left Harlem just when the Renaissance was getting started; he
criticized leading black intellectuals like W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke (who, in
turn, criticized him). Nevertheless; Harlem Shadows, his 1922 book of poetry, is Exhortation: Summer, 1919
generally considered the book that initiated the Harlem Renaissance; his Home to
Harlem (1928) was the only best-selling African American;,novel of the decade. Through the pregnant universe rumbles life's terrific thunder,
Whether the Harlem Renaissance,, [Link] movement or a resonant label And Earth's bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break,
encompassing artists with diverse;aims, whether McKay wasan American Harlemite Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls ofmen, thereunder:
or a man of the world, he was unquestionably one of the most important black writ Africa! long ages sleeping, .0 my motherland, awake!
ers of the 1920s. As well as influencing African American literature, he has had a
majorimpact on writing by West Indiansand Africans. ... In the East theclouds glow crimson with the new dawn thatisbreaking, 5
Claude McKay (Festus Claudius McKay) was born in Sunny Ville, a rural village And its golden glory fills the western skies.
in central Jamaica. This village, .with its setting of spectacular natural beauty,
became in later years his symbol of a lost golden age. McKay's grandfather, a West
0 my brothers and mysisters, wake!,arise!
For the new birth rends the old earth and the very dead are waking,
African Ashanti, had been brought to the island as a'slave, and McKay's father
passed on to his son what he remembered of Ashanti values and rituals. Economic Ghosts are turned flesh, throwing off the grave's disguise,
And the foolish, even children, are made wise; 10
•

necessity led the young McKay to Kingston (Jamaica's principal city) in 1909, where
he was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker and wheelwright. Combining his emerging For the bigearth groans in travail for the strong, new world in making—
literary ambitions with an interest in Jamaican folkways, McKay published two books 0 my brothers, dreaming for dim centuries,
of dialect poetry—Songs ofJamaica and Constab Ballads—in 1912. Prize money from Wake from sleeping; to the East turn, turn your eyes!
these books took him to the United States to study agriculture, but his literary ambi
tions drew him to New York City after two years in school (first at the Tuskegee Oh the night is sweetfor sleeping, but the shining day's for working;
Institute, then at Kansas State College).:He married his Jamaican sweetheart, Eula- Sons of the seductive night, for your children's children's sake, is
lie Imelda Lewars, in 1914; the couple had a [Link] marriage did not last. From the deep primeval forests where the crouching leopard's lurking,
Supporting himself in jobs like restaurant kitchen helper and Pullman railroad Lift your heavy-lidded eyes, Ethiopia! awake!
waiter, he began to publish in avant-gardejournals; by 1917 he was appearing in The In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking,
Seven Arts, Pearson's, and the prominent left-wjngLiberator, edited by Max Eastman. And its golden glory fills the western skies.
The Liberator published his famous poem If We Must Die in 1919- His poetry, much O my brothers and mysisters, wake! arise! 20
of it written in strict sonnet form, braided racial subject matter, radicalpolitics, and For the new birth rends the old earth and the very dead are waking,
poetic technique into compelling statements that were also good poetry according to Ghosts are turned flesh, throwing off the grave's disguise,
traditional standards.
And the foolish, even children, are made wise; 1
McKay's radical politics, already formed in Jamaica, rose from his belief that rac For the big earth groans in travail for the strong, new world in making—
ismwas inseparable from capitalism, which he sawas a structuredesigned to perpet
uate economic inequality. To him,attacking capitalism was attacking racial injustice. O my brothers, dreaming for long centuries, 25
Before the publication ofHarlem Shadows^ McKay had spent 1919-21 in England; Wake from sleeping; to the East turn, turn your eyes!
in 1923 he went to Moscow, where he was welcomed as a celebrity. He stayed in '• . 1920, 1922
Europe until 1934, living mainlyin France but also in Spain and Morocco. Home to
Harlem (1928), written mostly in France, was a rollicking, episodic guide to Harlem's
artistic, popular, and intellectual life: Later events turned it into one of the move Outcast
ment's last statements; retrenchment in the publishingindustry following the stock
market crash of 1929, the emergenceof younger African-American writers with dif For the dim regions whence my fathers came .
ferentvalues, and dissension among Harlem artists themselves combined to bring an My spirit, bondaged by the body, longs.
end to the Harlem Renaissance and altered the character of life in Harlem itself.
Words felt, but never heard, my lips would frame;
When McKay returned to the United States in 1934, the nation was deep in the
Great Depression. With general unemployment at over 25 percent, paid literary work My soul would sing forgotten jungle songs.
wasextremely hard to come by. In 1935 he joined the NewYork City branch of the I would go back to darkness and to peace,
Federal Writers' Project, a New Deal organization giving work to unemployed writ But the great western world holds me in fee,
ers. Except for his important autobiography, A Long Way from Home (1937), he did And I may never hope for full release
littlecreative work, and his health failed. Through his friendship with Ellen Tarry, a While to its alien gods I bend my knee.
young African American writer who was a Catholic, he received medical care from Something in me is lost, forever lost,
1408 / Claude McKay
America / 1409

Some vital thing has gone: out of my heart, The awful sin remained still unforgiven.
And I must walkthe wayof life a ghost All night a bright and solitary star
Among the sons of earth, a thing apart; (Perchance the one that ever guided him,
For I was born, far from my native clime, Yet gave him up at last to Fate's wild whim)
Under the white man's menace, Out of time. Hung pitifully o'er the swingingchar.
1922
Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view
The ghastly body swaying in the sun 10
The women thronged to look, but never a one
Showed sorrowin her eyes of steely blue;
Africa
And little lads, lynchers that were to be,
Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.
The sun sought thy dim bed and brought forth light,
The sciences were sucklings at thy breast; 1919,1922
When all the world was young in pregnant night
Thy slaves toiled at thy monumental best.
Thou ancient treasure-land, thou modern prize, Harlem Shadows
New peoples marvel at thy pyramids!
The years roll on, thy sphinx of riddle eyes I hear the halting footsteps of a lass
Watches the mad world with immobile lids. In Negro Harlem when the1 night lets fall
The Hebrews humbled them at Pharaoh's name. Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass
Cradle of Power! Yet all things were in vain! To bend and barter at desire's call. •
Honor and Glory, Arrogance and Fame! Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet
They went. The darkness swallowed thee again. Go prowling through the night from street to street!
Thou art the harlot, now thy time is done,
Of all the mighty nations of the sun. Through the long night until the silverbreak
1921, 1922
Of day the little gray feet know no rest;
Through the lone night until the last snow-flake
Has dropped from heaven upon the earth's white breast,
The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet
The Harlem Dancer
Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street.
Applauding youths laughed withyoung prostitutes Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched Way
And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway; Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace, '
Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Has pushed the timid little feet of clay,
Blown by black players upon-a picnic day.
She sang and danced on gracefully and calm, The sacred brown feet of my fallen'race! »
The light gauze hanging loose about herform; Ah, heart of me, the weary, weary feet
In Harlem wandering from street to street.
To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
Grown lovelierfor passing through a storm. 1918,1922
Upon her swarthy neck black shiny curls
Luxuriant fell; and tossing coins in praise,
The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls, America
Devoured her shapewith eager, passionate gaze;
But looking at her falsely-smiling face, Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
I knew her self was not in that"strange place. And sinks ,into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
1917, 1922
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
The Lynching Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood. ••!,

Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,

His Spirit in smoke -iscended to high heaven. I stand within her walls with not a shred
His father, by tin- <11it*lest way of pain, • j.«. • Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Had bidden him to his bosom once again; Darkly I gaze into the days ahead.
 141 Claude McKay Katherine [Link] /

And see her might and granite wonders there, Of jewelled buildings, pillars,-domes and spires
Beneath the touch of Time's unerringhand, Of [Link] dazzling to the sight}- •••>••
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand. A glorypainted on-the Eastern air,'r! "•" •'< •'' '•' •'. • •:•. •••.5

Of amorous'souridingtones like passionate lyres; •'

1921,1922
All colors laughing richly their delight •' ;' "•'•
And reigning overall the color fed. •' '.'-:
If We Must Die
My memory bears engraved the high-walled Kremlin,3
If we must die, let it not be like hogs Of halls 'symbolic of the tigerWilli" 10

Of Czarist4 ihstruments of mindless law .''. ..'

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot, And often nojw my .nerves'throb with the thrill
While round us barkthe mad and hungry dogs, When, in thatgilded place, I felt and saw
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die, The presence and the simple voice of Lenin.
So that our precious blood may not be shed 1953
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shallbe constrained to honor us though dead! 2; A reference to the red flags of the Communist overthrown iri the revolution of 191?.'' -'' '•'•!.'
government.,- ..; •<] • ..J ' . ., • ; ' 5, VladimirAllyich. Lenin (1870^-1924);-airriajor
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe! 3. •Walledarea containing government buildings, : force in,the Russian Revolution qf ,1917 and the
Though far outnumbered let us:show us brave, churches, arid rnuseurns'in central Moscow, capi first leader of the new Bolshevik (later. Commu-
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow! tal of Russia. ' (-•< hi . • •.' •. • • inisi)' government.' McKay met Lenin 'on his' visit
,4. A; reference ,tp the,absolute, rulers of Russia , .to Moscow.,. , •., ... . ..;- .. ,,:
What though before us lies: the open grave? •M
Like men we'[Link] [Link], cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall,; dyings but fighting back!
1919,1922
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
O Word I Love to Sing 1890-1980

O word I love to sirig! thou art too tender Over a long writirigjife Katherine Anne Porter produced only four books, of'stories
w~-

For all the passions agitating me; and one novel, Ship df„Fools, ;which [Link] appear until she was pver seventy. Her
For all my bitterness thou art too tender, :• ;
reputation as.a,prose writer didnot depend on quantity, each story was-technically
I cannot pour my red soul into thee. skilled, emotionally powerful, combining traditional narration with [Link]
techniques and contemporary subject matter. •ftJ>- . ,;.
O haunting melody! thou art too slender, Callie [Link]-rrshe changed the--name to Katherinef'Anne;when, slje::became a
Too fragile like a globe of crystal glass; writer—was born in the small settlerhent of. Indian^Greek, Texas; her mother died
For all my stormy thoughts thou art too slender, soon after giving birth to her fourth child;vwhen Porter, was not quite two years old.
The burden from my bosom wili not pass. Her father moved them all to his mother's home in Kyle, Texas, where the maternal
grandmother raised the family in extreme poVerty. The father gave up all attempts to
O tender word! O melody so slender! support them either financially or emotipnally; the securityprovided by the strong,
O tears of passion saturate with brine, loving, but pious and stern grandmother [Link] her death when Porter was
0 words, unwilling words, ye can not render eleven. Porter married to leave home immediately aftef'-her sixteenth birthday, only
My hatred for the foe of me and mine. to find that rooted domesticity was not for her. Long before^herdivorce in 1915, she
hadseparated from her first husband and begun a jife of travekjictivity, andchanges
1922 ofjobs: • •••'•/ '•'••/• , ' '•! "j ,;!,: \'.r,,! :!^
: She started writing in'1916 as a reporter for a Dallas hewspa'per. In 1917'.she
moved toDenver; the/next year toNew YorkGity's Greenwich VillageV^tween 1918
Moscow and 11924 she,lived'[Link] Mexico, freelancing.i meeting artists andintellectuals,
arid becoming iriyplvedin revolutioriary;politics.:Iri, Mexico;she found thernesources
Moscow for many loving her was dead . . . ofjournaljsm'iriadequate'to her ambitions; using an anecdote she hadheard from an
And yet I sawa bright Byzantine1 fair, archaeologist as a [Link].,story,; Maria Conception, which; was
1. Relating to the Byzantine Empire, centered in
published in the prestigious Century magazine in 1922. Like all her st'ories, it dealt
f,Russia, from the3rd to the 15th century. Byzan- witb^powerful emotions and had a [Link] of locale. Critics praised her as a
Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), a [Link] JpQfi 9ft and architecture are characterized by
on the siteof the ancient Byzantium. The empire spires, dome's, gilding, and mosaics. ipajor talent. ....
dominated much of eastern Europe, including- Although she considered herself a serious writer from this time on, Porter was
 1426 - ' The Eatonville Anthology / 1427

ZQRA NEALE HURSTON The Great Depression brought an end to the structure that had undergirded Hurs
1891-^1960 '.
tpn sheldwork, and she turned,fully to writing. Her most important work appeared
in the mid-1950s when there was little interest in it, or in African American writinc
in general. She publishedJonah's Gourd Vine in 1934 (a novel whose main character
Zora Neale Hur$toriis considered to be the most important African American is based on her father); MuUsand. Men in 1935 (based on materialfrom her field
woman who [Link] World War II. She was born in 1891 in Eatonville, Florida, JSSlSLr8£fc3™ W3S —r bestl,sell'ng book,>t it earned a total of only
an all-black town. Herfather, a Baptist"preacher ofconsiderable eloquence,'was riot $943.75); and TTzeir Eyes Were Watching God, in 1937. This novel about an African
a family man and made lifedifficult for his wife'and [Link]. The'tie between American woman's quest for selfhood has become apopular favorite. The main char
mother and daughter wasstrohg; Lucy Hurstoriwasadriving force arid'strong sup acter in the novel is Janie Starks,'who begins to tell her story to her best friend
port for all herchildr'erii But her"death1 when Zora'HUrstoh was1 about-eleven left the Pheoby Watson. The tale is taken tip bythe voice of the riarrator, returned to Janie
child with little home'life.-Hitherto, the town of Eatonville had been like an extended only at the conclusion. It tells of Janie's young girlhood as she is brought up by her
family to. hery and her-early childhood* was protected from .racism because she grandmother, who is obsessed withjanie's finding agood husband; her first marriage
encountered no white people. [Link] mother's death, Hurston's wanderings;and to an old farmer, Logan Killicks; her second to an entrepreneur and politician joe
her initiation into a racist society began. The early [Link] given her the core of Marks; and a third relationship with a young migrant worker, Tea Cake: Through
self-confidence she needed to survive. She moved from one relative's home to these three men Janie experiments with roles for black women via relations to black
another until she wasold enough to support^erself, and with her earningsshe began men. Kilhclcs and Starks are solid, stable citizens but their narrow goals and their
slowly to pursue [Link]. She was so highly motivated that although she had inability to see Janie as aseparate person stifle her. The footloose and imaginative
never finished grade school in Eatonville she was able to eriter and complete college. Tea Cake, unsuitable as alife partner, sets her free, but only temporarily. At the end
At Howard University in Washington, D.C. (the nation's leading Africari Arnerican though Janie is alone, she is content, having "been"tun de horizon and back."
university at that time), in the early 1920s, she studied with the great black educator Then Eyes Were Watching God is, as well as awoman's story, adescription and
Alain Locke, who was to1 itiake history'with his anthology The New Negro in 1925. critique of southern; African American folk society, showing its divisions and diver
After a short story; Drenched in Light,1 appeared inthe New YorkAfricari Americari sity Technically, ,t is aloosely organized, highly metaphorical novel, with passages
magazine Opportunity, she decided to move toHarlem and pursue a literary career
there. •. -,-'. ;. . -. .---.. •"
MR AtLqUm7;d °f e*reme 3rtiStic comP^i°n- Other books followed in
lyjH and 1939 and she wrote an autobiography-Dust Tracks on a /W-which
As her biographer, Robert Hemenvy^y, writes, ."Zora [Link] an extraordi
narilywittywoman, and she acquiredan,instant reputation in NewYork for her high hefTr
her editors.'" A
a! his;
K• [Link]^ °uCCaSi0nal eXPressio"simply
however, Hurston of antiwhite
had no sentiments removed
audience. For by
the last
spirits and side-splitting talesof Eatonville life/She could,walk intoa room ofstrangr decade of her life she lived in, Florida, working from time to time as amaid '
ers . . . and almost immediately gather people, charm, amuse, and impress them."
Generous, outspoken, high spirited, an interesting conversationalist, she worked as
a personal secretary for the politically liberal riovelist Fannie Hurst arid entered Bar
nard College. Her career took two simultaneous directions: at Barnard she studied
with the famous anthropologist Franz Boas and developed an interest in black folk The Eatonville Anthology1
traditions, and in Harlem she became well known as a storyteller, an informal per /. The Pleading Woman
forming artist. Thus she was doubly committed to the oral narrative, and her work
excels in its representation of pebpletalking. •;- . ,-!:. ,. ..'.. Mrs. Tony Roberts is the pleading woman. Shejust loves to ask for things
When she graduated from. Barnardin 1927 she received a fellowship to return to Her husband gives her all he can take and scrape, which js considerably
Florida and study the oral traditions of Eatonvjlle. From, then on, she strove to more than most wives get for their housekeeping, but she goes from door to
achieve a balance between focusing on .[Link] and her;origins, and;focusing on door begging for things.
herselfas an individual. After the fellowship money ran out, Hurstpn was supported
by Mrs. R. Osgood Mason, an elderly white patron of the arts. Mason had firm ideas Restarts at the store. "Misf Clarke," she sing-songs in ahigh keening
about, what she wanted her proteges to produce; she required therri all to get her
voice,- gimme hi piece uh meat tuh boil apot uh greens wid. Lawd know!
permission before publishing any of the workthat; she had supported. Iri this rela mean mah chillen is so hongry! Hits uh shame! Tony, don't fee-ee-eee-ed
tionship; Hurstori experienced a 'difficultythat all the black artists of the Harlem
Renaissance had to face—the fact that well-off white people were the sponsors of, Mr. Clarke knows that she has money and that her larder is well stocked
and often the chief audience for, their work. tor Tony Roberts is the best provider on his list. But her keening annoys him
Hurston's work was not entirely popular with the male intellectual leaders of the and he rises heavily. The pleader at his elbow shows all the joy of astarvino
Harlem community. She quarreled especially with Langston Hughes, refusing to man being seated at a feast. B
align her work with anybody's ideologies; she rejected the idea that a black writer's "Thass right Mist' Clarke,. De Lawd loveth de cheerful giver. Gimme jes'
chief concern should be how blacks were being portrayed to the white reader. She a hi piece bout dis big (indicating the width of her hand) an' de Lawd'll
did not write to "uplift her race," either; because in her view it was already uplifted, bless yuh. . , .
she was not embarrassed to present her characters as mixtures of good and bad,
strong and weak. Some of the other Harlem writers thought her either naive or ego-
•tistical in ignoring appearances and in insisting on going her own way. But Hurstor . The text is that of/ Love Myself When I Am brings together many of the stories about its resi
Laughing ...and Then When IAm. Looking Mean dents that she told at partie^^Uarlem. The
fcelt that freedom could only mean freedom from all coercion, no matter what t| and Impressive (1979), edited by Alice Walker. siorics ;ire cm in the forms uf^^Bmal African
source. Eatonville was Hurston's hometown; here she American tales. ^^^
 / Zora Neale Hurston The Eatonville AnthologyI 1429

She follows this angel-on-earth to his meat tub and superintends the cut bluestone, strychnine, nux vomica,.even an entire Peruna2 bottle beaten up.
ting, crying out in pain when he refuses to move the knife over just a teeny It didn't fatten him, but it didn't kill him. So Eatonville has resigned itself
bit mo'. to the plague of Tippy, reflecting that it has erred iri certain matters and is
Finally, meat in hand, she departs, remarking on the meanness of some being chastened. .-•.. .-•
people who give a piece of salt meat only two-fingers wide when they were In spite of all the attempts upon his life,Tippy is still willingto be friendly
plainly asked for a hand-wide piece. Clarke puts it down to Tony's account with anyone who will let him. •:
and resumes his reading.
With the slab of salt pork as a foundation, she visits various homes until V. The Way of a Man with a Train
she has collected all she wants for the day. At the Piersons for instance:
"Sister Pierson, pleeree-ease gimme uh han'full uh collard greens fuh me Old Man Anderson lived seven or eight miles out in the country from
an' mah po' chillen! 'Deed, me an' mah chillen is so hongry. Tony doan' fee- Eatonville. Over by Lake Apopka. He raised feed-corn and cassava and went
ee-eed me!" to market with it two or three times a year. He bought all of his victuals
Mrs. Pierson picks a bunch of greens for her, but she springs away frOm wholesale so he wouldn't have to come to town for several months more.
them as if they were poison. "Lawd a mussy, Mis' Pierson, you ain't gonna He was different from citybred folks. He had never seen a train. Every
gimme dat lil' eye-full uh greens fuh me an' mah chillen, is you? Don't be so body laughed at him for even the smallest child, in Eatonville had either
graspin'; Gawd won't bless yuh. Gimme uh han'full mo'. Lawd, some folks been to Maitland or Orlando and watched a train go by; On Sunday after
is got everything, an' theys jes' as gripin' an stingy!" noons all of the young people of the village would go over to Maitland, a
Mrs. Pierson raises the ante, and the pleading woman moves on to the mile away, to see Number 35 whizz southward on its way to Tampa and
next place, and on and on. The next day, it commences all over. wave at the passengers. So we looked down on him a little. Even we children
felt superiorin the presence of a person so lackingin worldly knowledge.
II. Turpentine Love
The grown-ups kept tellinghim he ought to go see a train. He always said
he didn't have time to wait so long. Only two trains a day passed through
Jim Merchant is always in good humor—even with his wife. He says he Maitland. But patronage and ridicule finally had its effect and Old Man
fell in love with her at first sight. That was some years ago. She has had all Anderson drove in one morning early. Number 78 went north to Jacksonville
her teeth pulled out, but they still get along' splendidly. at 10:20. He drove his light wagon over in the woods beside the railroad
He says the first time he called on her he found out that she was subject below Maitland, and sat down to wait. He began to fear that his horse would
to fits. This didn't cool his love, however. She had several in his presence. get frightened and run .away with the wagon. So he took him out and led
One Sunday, while he was there, she had one, and her mother tried to him deeper into the grove and tied him securely. Then he returned to his
give her a dose of turpentine to stop it. Accidentally, she spilled it in her eye wagon and waited some more. Then he remembered that some of the train-
and it cured her. She never had another fit, so they got married and have wise villagers had said the engine belched fire and smoke. He had better
kept each other in good humor ever since. move his wagon out of danger. It might catch fire. He climbed down from
the seat and placed himself between the shafts to draw it away. Just then 78
came thundering overthe trestle spouting smoke, and suddeply began blow
ing for Maitland. Old Man Anderson became so frightened he ran away with
Becky Moore has eleven children of assorted colors and sizes. She has the wagon through the woods and tore it up worse then the horse ever could
never been married, but that is not her fault. She has never stopped any of have done. He doesn't know yet what a train looks like, and says he doesn't
the fathers of her children from proposing, so if she has no father for her care.

children it's not her fault. The men round about are entirely to blame.
The other mothers of the town are afraid that it is catching. They won't
VI. Coon Taylor
let their children play with hers;
Coon Taylor never did any real stealing. Of course, if he saw a chicken or
a watermelon he'd take it. The people used to get mad but they [Link]
IV. Tippy
catch him.. He took so many melons from Joe Clarke that he set up in the
Sykes Jones' family all shoot craps. The most interesting member of the melon patch one nightwithhis shotgun loaded withrock-salt. He was going
family—also fond of bones, but anotherkind—is Tippy, theJones' dog. to fix Coon. But he was tired. It is hard work being a mayor, postmaster,
He is so thin, that it amazes one that he lives at all. He sneaks into village storekeeper and everything. He dropped asleep sitting on a stump in the
kitchens if the housewives are careless about the doors and steals meats, middle of the patch. So he didn't see Coon when he came. Coon didn't see
even off the stoves. He also sucks eggs. . him either, that is, not at first. He knew the stump was there, however. He
For these offenses he has been sentenced to death dozens of times, and had opened many of Clarke's juicy Florida Favorite on it. He selected his
the sentences executed upon him, only they didn't work. He has been fed 2. A patent medicine cure-all.
1430 / Zora Neale Hurston The Eatonville Anthology / 1431

fruit, walked over tothe stump and burst [Link] on it. This is, he thought as soon as they get home. He says there's no sense in her shouting, as big a
it was the stump: untiil it fell overwith &• [Link] he knew it was1 no stump devil as she is. She just does it to slur himt Elijah Moseley asked her why
and departed hastily from those parts. He had cleared the. fence when she didn't stop shouting, seeing she always got abeating about it. She says
Clarke came to, as it were. So the charge of rock-salt was [Link] the she can't "squinch the sperrit." Then Elijah asked Mr. McDuffy to stop
desert air. • .:i;- :.• -•; : .'•:'. •• ! i:>.ty.i .•;•• .. :.- beating her, seeing that she was going to shout anyway. He answered that
During the sugar-cane season, he found he couldn't resist Clarke's soft she just did it for spite and that his fist was just!as hard as her head. He
green cane, but Clarke did not go to sleep this time. So after he had cut six could last just as long as she. Sothe village let the matter rest.
or eight stalks by the moonlight, Clarke rose up out of the cane stoppings
with his shotgun and made Coon sit right down and chew up the last one of
them on the spot. And the next day he made Coon leave his town for three •5 V- XI. Double-Shuffle
months. " ! Back in the good old days before the [Link], things were very simple
in Eatonville. People didn't fox-trot. When the, town wanted to put on its
VII. Village Fiction Sunday clothes and wash behind the ears,.it,put on a "breakdown." The
daring younger set would two-step and waltz,,butthe good church members
Joe Lindsay is said by Lum Boger to be the largest manufacturer of and the elders stuck to the grand march. By rural canons dancing is wicked,
prevarications in Eatonville; Brazzle (late owner of the world's leanest and but one is not held to have danced until the feet have been crossed. Feet
meanest mule) contends that his business is the largest in the state and his don't getcrossed whenone grand marches.
wife holds that he is the biggest liar in the world. At elaborate affairs the organ from the Methodist church was moved up
Exhibit A—He claims that while he was in Orlando one day he saw a to the hall and Lizzimore, the blind man, presided. When informal gather
doctor cut open a Woman, remove everything—liver, lights and heart ings were held, he merely played his guitar assisted byany volunteer with
iricluded-^-clean each of them separately; the doctor then washed out the mouth organs or accordions. . *;: .
empty woman, dried her out neatly with a towel and replaced the organs so Among white, people the march is as mild [Link] had been passed on by
expertly that she was up and about her work in a couple of weeks. Volstead.3 But it still has a kick in Eatonville. Everybody, happy, shining
eyes, gleaming teeth. Feet dragged 'shhlap.y;shhlap! tobeat out the time. No
VIII. * orchestra needed. [Link]. round! Back again, parse-me-la! shlap! shlapi
Strut! Strut! Seaboard! Shlap!;Shalp! Tiddy bumm! Mr. Clarke in the lead
Sewell is a man who lives all to himself.'He moves a great deal. So often, with Mrs. Moseley. ,. . 1-.., ;iil.
that 'Lige Moseley says his chickens are so used to moving that every time It's too much for some ofthelyoung folks. Double snuffling commences.
he comes out into his backyard the chickens lie down and cross their legs, Buck and wing. Lizzimore about to break his guitar. Accordion doing contor
ready to be tied up again. tions. People fall back against the walls, and let the soloist have it, shouting
He is baldheaded; but he says he'doesn't mind that, because he wants as as they clap the old, old double-shuffle songs.
little as possible between him and Godi
'Me an' mah honey, got two mo' days
Twom6'\lays!tuhdo'debuck' '
I

Mrs. Clarke is Joe Clarke's wife. She is a soft-looking, middle-aged

Sweating bodies, laughing mouths,,^grotesque, faces, feet drumming
fiercely. Deacons clapping as, hardlas the rest. .,
woman, whose bust and stomacharealways holding a get-together.
She waits on the store sometimes and cries every time he yells at her "Great big riigg0r, blackas tar
which he does every time she makes, a mistake, which is quite often. She Trying tuh githih hebberi brt uh'lectric car.'?
calls her husband"Jody." They sayhe used to [Link] the storewhen he
wasa youngman,but he is riot so impatient how. He canwaituntil he goes "Some lovecabbage, some love kale
home.
But 1love a galwid a short skirt- tail.?''
She shouts in Church every Sunday and''shakes the'hand of fellowship
with everybody'in ttie Churchi with""Her 'eyes1 closed, but somehow always Longtall angel—steppin'down, l
Longwhite robean' starry crown; ,.-•-•
misses her husband. ''
'Ah would not marry uh black gal(bummbumm!) t
Tell yuh de reason why
Every time she comb her hair
IMrs. McDuffy goes to Church every Sunday and always shouts and telli She make de goo-goo eye. •• ^^^
sr "determination." Her husband always sits in the back row and beats he* 3. Andrew J. Volstead (1860-1947).«....urcssman who introduced the Prohibition J0fment.
 1432 Lora Neale Hurston The Eatonville Anthology /

• Would, not marry a yaller gal (bumm bumm!) petticoat was always showing soperhaps hewas justified. There was nothing
. Tell yuhde reason! why ,.:, . . . . . else to do except flirt with married men.
Her neckso [Link], . This went onfor along time. First one wife and then another complained
Ahm 'fraid, she'd, never die., of her, or drove her from the preserves by threat.
But the affair with Crooms was the most prolonged and serious. He was
Would not marry, uh preacher even known to have boughther a pair of shoes.
TeU yuh de reason VYhy, Mrs. Laura Crooms was a meek little woman who took all of her troubles
Every time he comes' tuh town
He makes de chicken fly. crying, andtalked a great deal of leaving things in the handsof God.
r-T}vs-il-'. The affair came to a head one night in orange* picking time. Crooms was
When the buck dance4 was over, the boyswould give the floor to the girls over'at Oneido picking oranges. Many fruit pickers'move from one town to
and they would parse-me-la with a sly eye out of the corner to see if anybody the other during the season. ' ' -.
was looking who might "have them up in church" on conference night.s The [Link] collected atthe store-postoffice as iscustomary ohSaturday
Then there would be more dancing. Then Mr.'Clarke would call for every nights; The town has had its bath arid with its week's pay in pocket fares
body's best-attention and announce that 'freshments wasserved! Every gent'- forth to:be merry. The men tell stories and treat the ladies to soda-water,
man would please take hislady bythearm andscorch6 herright up tode table peanuts and peppermint candy. ..
fur a treat!1'' •• \!>u- •> Daisy was trying toget treats, buttheporch was cold toher that night.
Then the men would stick their arms out with a flourish and ask their "Ah don't keer if you don't treat me. What's adirty lil nickel?" She flung
ladies: "You lak chicken? Well, then, takea wing."And the ladies would take this at-Walter Thomas^ 'The everloving Mister Crooms will gimme anything
the preferred "wings" and? parade up to the long table and be served. Of atall Ah wants." .:
course mOst of them had brought baskets in which were heaps of jointed "You bettershet up yo* mouf talking 'bout Albert Crooms. Heah his wife
and friedchicken, two or three kinds of pies, cakes, potato pone and chicken comes right now."
purlo.7 The hall would separate into happy groups about the baskets until Daisy went akimbo. "Who? Me! Ah don't keer whut Laura Crooms think.
time for more'dancing. >:.*•••• If she ain't a heavy hip-ted Mama enough to keep him; she don't need to
But the boys and girls got scattered about during the war, and now they come crying to me."
dance the fox-trot by a brand,new piano. They'dd waltz and two-step still, She stood making goo-goo eyes as Mrs. Grooms walked upon the porch.
but no one now considers it good'form to look his chin over his partner's Daisy laughed loud, made several references to Albert Crooms, and when
shoulder and stick out behind. One night just for fun and to humor the old she saw the mail-bag come in from Maitland she said, "Ah better go in an'
folks, theydanced, thatis, theygrand marched, but everyone picked up their see if Ah ain't got a letter from Oneido."
feet. Bah!! .. •
The more Daisy played the game ofgetting Mrs. Crooms' goat, the better
she liked it. She ran in and out ofthe store laughing until she could scarcely
XII. The Head of the Natl stand. Some ofthe people present began to talk to Mrs. Crooms^-to egg her
on to halt Daisy's boasting, but she was for leaving it all in the hands of
Daisy Taylor was the town vamp. Not that she was pretty. But sirens were God. Walter Thomas .kept on after Mrs. Crooms until she stiffened and
all but non-existent in the town. Perhaps she was forced to it by circum resolved to fight: Daisy was inside when shecame to this resolve and never
stances. She was quite dark, withlittle bushy patches of hair squatting over dreamed anything of the kind could happen. She had gotten hold of an
her head. These were held down by shingle-nails often. No one knows renvelope and came laughing and shouting, "Oh, Ah can't stand to see
whether she did this for artistic effect or fpr lack pfhairpins, but there they Oneido lose!"
were shining in the little patches ;pf hair when she; got all dressed for the There was abox ofaxVhandlefron display on the porch, propped up against
afternoon and came uptoClarke's store tosee if there was any mail for her. the door jamb. As Daisy stepped upon the porch, Mrs. Crooms leaned the
It was seldom that anyone;wrpte to Daisy,but she [Link] the men the heavy end ofone of those handles heavily upon her head. She staggered
town would beassembled there byfive o'clock,! and some one could usually from [Link] to the ground and the timid Laura, fearful of a counter
be induced to buy her some soda water or peanuts. attack, struck again and Daisy toppled into the town ditch. There was not
Daisy flirted with married men. There were Only, two single men in town. enough water in there to do more than muss her up. Every time she tried to
Lum Boger, who was engaged to the assistant'schoolteacher, and Hiram rise> <lown would come that- ax^handle again. Laura was fighting a scared
Lester, who had been off to school atTuskegee and wouldn't look at a per fight. With Daisy, thoroughly licked, she retired to the store porch and left
sonlike Daisy. In addition toother drawbacks; shewas pigeon-toed and her herfallen enemy in. theditch; But Elijah Moseley, who was some distance
4. All-male dance.
down the street when the trouble began, arrived as the victor was withdraw
5. A formal meetingof church officials. The girls
6. Escort (dialect).
,7. Chicken pilaf,a stew of rice, vegetables, and ing. He rushed up and .picked Daisy out of the mud and began feeling her
are afraid they might be accused of loose chicken. head. .....-.•-;-•..
behavior. •
"Is she hurt much?" Joe Clarke asked from thedoorway.
1434 / Zora Neale. Hurston The Eatonville Anthology / 1435

"I don't know," Elijah answered.."I was just looking: to see if Laura had
been lucky enough to hit one of those nails on the head and drive it in." XlV.
Before a week was- up; 'Daisy moved to Orlando. There iri. a wider sphere, Once 'way back yonder before the stars fell all the animals used to talk
perhaps, her talents as a vamp were appreciated;; . • ,< just like people. In them days dogs and rabbits was the bestof friends—even
• . • '<
•. i. .
.,•.••••••••••
• .
'•'
. • •
•' i »-»./.••.•:• l • '
.
' •• •
...
•....,,.»
;
'..:••' thb both ofthem was stuck on the same gal—which was Miss Nancy Coon.
XltiPan%am:CaVUne " /' " She had the sweetest smile and the prettiest striped and bushy tail to be
found anywhere.
Sister Cal'line Potts was a silent woman. Did all of her laughing down They both run [Link] nigh offtrying to win her for themselves—fetch
inside, but did the thing.^hatkept theitownin an uproar of laughter. It was ing niceripe persimmons andsuch. But she never give one orthe otherno
the general opinion [Link] village that Cal'line would do anything she had a satisfaction.
mind to. And she had a mind to do several things. .; Finally one night Mr. Dogpopped the question right put. "Miss Coon,"
Mitchell Potts; her husband,' had a weakness for women. No. one; ever he says, "Ma'am, also ivia'am which would you ruther be—a lark flyin' or a
believed that she was jealous. She did things to the women, surely. But most dove a settin'?" : .
any townsman would have said that she did them because she liked the Course Miss Nancy she blushed and laughed a little, and hid. her face
novel situation and the queer things she could bring out of it. ; behind her bushy tail for aspell. Then she said sorter shy like, "[Link] love
Once he took up with Delphine—^called Mis' Pheeny by the town. She yo' sweet voice, brother, dawg-^but—I ain't jes' exactly set my mind yit."
lived on the outskirts on the edge of the piney woods. The town-winked and Her and Mr..Dog set orija spell; when up comes hopping Mr. Rabbit wid
talked. People don't make secrets of such things; in villages. Cal'line went his tail fresh washed and his whiskers shining. He got right down to business
about her business with her thin black lips pursed tight as ever, and her and asked Miss Coon to. marry him, too.
shiny black eyes unchanged. • "Oh, Miss Nancy,'' he says, "Ma'am, also Ma'am, if you'd see me settin'
"Dat devil of a Cal'line's got somethin' up her sleeve!" The town smiled in swaddle ofamud-cat? leadm' aminnow, what would you think? Ma'am also
anticipation.
"Delphine is [Link] a cigar for her to smoke; She ain't crazy,!';said some
Ma'am?" Which is aout and put proposal as everybody knows.
as the weeks went on and nothing happened. Even Pheeny. herself would
••; "[Link] a,Y^ul nice, Brother Rabbit and abeautiful dancer, but ypu cannot
give an-extra flirt; td her over-starched petticoatsas she rustled into church
siijg like Brother Dog. Both yqu'uns come back next week to gimme time
i i: for, [Link]." ..'*•.;'.'.'"'
past her of Sundays.. •:•..••.. I
Mitch Potts: said furthermore, that he was tired of Cal'line's foolishness.
She had to stay where he put her. [Link] soupt-bone (arm) was too ;;

strong to let a Woman [Link]-. fNough was Enough. Arid he did some
fancy cussing, arid hewas the fanciest cusserin the county. !. sing none
So the town waited, and the longer it:waited, the odds changed slowly "Thass all right, feer Dog. But ifIhad asweet voice like you got: I'd have
from the wife tothe husband. ; ' ..; .,<i :..- it worked on and make it sweeter." ' •••*?. :.:.»••..
One Saturday, Mitch knocked off work at two o'clock and went overto
Maitland. [Link] back with a retangular box,under:his! arm and: kept i [: '!Hpw[ How!" How!"!Mr. Dog cried, jumping up and down. ,V'
straight on outto the barn toput it away. He ducked around the eornenof Lemme fix itfor you, like Ido for Sister Lark and Sister IvIocIqngUrd."
the house quickly, but even so, his wife glimpsed-the package. Very much When? Where??* asked Mr, Dog^all excited. He was figuringthat ifhe
like a shoe box. So! -\..,.., . ,. , . ??uf"PgJ^a little betterMiss Coon wouldbe bound to have him.
He put on=the. kettle,and took a bath.! Sh^' stood in iher bare, [Link]; the Just yo" meet me t'morrer in dehuckleberry' patch? sayVthe rabbit anil
oft they both goes to bed.
ironing board and kept on ironing. 'He dressed. It was about five; o'clock but
still very light. He fiddled around outside.; She kept on with her ironing. As The dog is thierepn time next day and after awhile the rabtit comes
loping up. ;
soon as the sun got red, he sauntered out to:the barn, got: the parcel;and "JVlawnin', Brer Dawg," he says kinder chippy like. "Ready to git to' voice
walked away down! the road, past the store and out into, the piney woods.;As sweetened?" ..,'«;',• .'.'"''. "''"
soon as he leftthe house, Cal'line slipped on;hershoes without taking:time "Shply, sholy,Brer^ .R^it^Let's;we'all Kurr^ about it. Iwants tuh sere
todon stockings, putonone of her husband's old Stetsons, worn and floppy, nade Miss Nancy frpfn the piney woods tuhnigtit."
slung the axe over her [Link] followed!in his.:wake. He was hailed :'|Well, deii, open yp' mouf and poke out yp'tpngue," says ^rabbit.
cheerily as he passed the sitters on the store porch and answered;smiling No sooner did Mr. bog poke out his tongue than Mr. Rabbit split itwith
sheepishly .and passed on.. Two minutes later passed Ihis wife, silently, aknife and ran for all he was worth to ahollow stump and hid hisself.
unsrnilingly,.and set the porch to giggling andbetting.. .-::•; ' ... The dog has been mad at the rabbitever since.
^Hhour passed perhaps. It was dark. Clarke had long ago lighted, the
swmfing kerosene lamp inside. ..!.'•: >. 8. C\i>
IA "/ Zora Neale Hurston How It Feels to-Be-;Colored Mb
# 37

Anybody who don't believe it happened, justlook at the dog's tongue and It seemed that I had suffered asea change. I was riotZoraof OrangeCounty
he can see for himselfwhere the rabbit' slitit right up the middle. any more; I was now a little colored;girl.I<found<itout'iri certain ways. Iri
Stepped on a tin, mah storyends. myheart as Well asiri the mirror; 1 became, a fast brawn-Mvarranted not to
. ..;i. J927 nib nor run.;

But I am not tragically colored. [Link] no; great sorrow dammed up in

mysoul, nor lurking-behind myeyes*;I donot mindat all. Ldo not belong to
the sobbing school'of Negrohood whohold that nature somehow has given
How It Feels to Be Colored Me1 them a lowdown dirtydeal and whose feelings, are all hurt aboutit. 'Even- in
the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that!the world is" to
I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances the strong regardless ofalittle pigmentation, moreor lessi No, I do riot weep
except'the1 fact that I am theonly Negro iri the United States whose grandfa at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
ther on the(mother'sside"'was''i^t an Indian"chief.'*''' Someone is always at my elbowreminding me that I am the granddaugh
I remember the veryday that 1became colored. ,Up to my thirteenthyear ter of slaves. It fails to register depression -with'me. Slavery, is sixty years in
I lived in the little Negro tbWri pf'Eafpnville, Flbri^'a: It is exclusively a the past. The: operation .was successful arid theipatient is doing well, thank
colbred'[Link] only White people 1knew passed 'thfjatigh the town going you. The terrible struggle thatmade mean American outo£a potential slave
toor cornipg'frorn [Link] native, whites rodedtflty horses, the North said "On the line!" The Reconstruction said "Get set!"; and the generation
ern tourists chugged down' the'sandy"villageroad'in automobiles. The town before said "Go!" I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch
knew the Southerners &rid never'stopped:cane chewmg,*when they passed; to look behind and weep. Slavery is the price I paid for civilization, and the
But the Northerners were spmethirig'els^e'^gam^Th^y Were peered at cau choice was not with me. It is a bully adventure and worth all that I have
tiously from behindthe curtains by the timid. The more venturesome,would paid through my ancestors for it. No one on earth everhada greater chance
come butonthe porch toWatch them go past and got just as much pleasure for glory. The world to be won and nothing to be lost. It is thrilling to
out of the tourists as the tourists got out of the village.
think—to know that for any act of mine, I shall get twice as much praise or
"The front porchrhight'seem a daring jldacefoi; the rest of the town, but it twice as much blame. It is quite exciting to hold the center of the national
was a gallery seat for me. My favorite place Was atop the gate-post. Prosce
stage, with the spectators not knowingwhether to laugh or to weep.
nium box2 for a born first-nighter., Not onlydid I enjoythe show, but I didn't The positionof my white-neighbor is much more difficult. No brown spec
mind ;th'e actors knowing that I liked it. I'usually'spoke'to them in passing. ter pulls up a chair beside me when I sit down to eat. No dark ghost thrusts
I'd wave at them and when they returned my salute, I would say something
its leg against mine in bed. The game of keeping what one has is never so
like this: "Howdy-do-Well-i-thatik-ydu-where-yo automo exciting as the game of getting.
bile or thehorse paused at this, and aftera queerexchange of compliments,
I do not always feel colored. Even now I often achievethe unconscious
1 would probably "go a piece of the way" with them, as we say in farthest
Florida. If one of my family happened to come to the front in time to see
Zora of Eatonville beforethe Hegira.3 I feel most colored when 1am thrown
against a sharp white background.
me, of course negotiations would be rudely broken off. But even so, it is
For instance at Barnard. "Besides the waters of the Hudson" I feel my
clear that \ was the first "welcbme-t6-Pur-state" Flbridiari, and I hope the
Miami Chamber of Commerce will' please take notice. race. Among the thousand white persons, I am a dark rock surged upon, and
overswept, but through it all, I remain myself. When covered by the waters,
During this period, White jj.e&ple differed from colored tome only in that 1am; and the ebb but reveals me again.
they rode through town and never lived1 there. They liked to'hear me "speak
pieces*' arid sing and Wanted 'to see medance the parse-irie-laj and gave me
generously of their small silver for doing these things, which seerned strange Sometimes it is the other way around. A white person is set down in our
tome fbV TWarited to do them so much thatT needed bribing to stop. Only midst, but the contrast is just as sharp for me. For instance, when I sit in
they didn't know it. The colored people gave no dimes. They deplored any
the drafty: basement that is The New World Cabaret4 with a white person,
my color comes. We enter chatting about any little [Link] we have in
joyful tendencies in me, but T was their Zora nevertheless! I beloriged to
common and are seated by the jazz waiters.. Iri: the abrupt, way that jazz
them, to the nearby hotels, to the county—everybody's Zora.
orchestras have, this one plunges into a number. It loses no time in circum
Butchanges came in the family' when I was'thirteen,, arid Iwas sent to
locutions, but gets right down to business. It constricts the thorax and splits
school in Jacksonville. I left Eatbnville, the to'vvh of the 61eariders,"as Zora.
the heart with its tempo and narcotic harmonies. This orchestra grows ram
When Tdisembarked from the' river-boat atJacksonville, sBe was no more. bunctious, rears on its hind legs and attacks the tonal veil with primitive
1. The text is that of I Love Myself Whett I Am . Wajjjer. . . .,
Laughing... and Then Again When I Am Looking :' H 27 Box'kt'the front of the auditorium, closest to 3. Forced march of Muhammad from Mecca to journey for safety.
Mean and Impressive (1979), edited by Alice the stage. Medina in a.d. 622; hence any forced flight or 4. Popular Harlem nightclub in the 1920s.
1438 / Zorai Neale Hurston - ; ii The Gilded Six-Bits / 1439

fury, rending it, [Link] until it: breaks through to the jungle beyond. I
follow those heathen-f-i-follow; them exultingly. I dance wildly inside myself; The Gilded Six-Bits
I yell within, [Link]; Lshakeimy.' assegai? .above my head,'I hurl it true to \
the mark yeeeeooww! I am in the jungle and living in the jungle way. My It was\ Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement that
face is painted red and yellow and my body is painted blue. My pulse is looked to thepayroll oftheG andG Fertilizer works for its support.
throbbing like a, war drum./.Lwant to islaughtersorriething—give pain, give But thereNwas something happy about the place. The front yard was
death to what, Tdo hot-know. But theipiece ends.-The men of the orchestra parted in the middle by a sidewalk from gate to door-step, a sidewalk edged
wipe their lips and rest their, fingers.. I .creep back slowly to the veneer we on eitherside by quart bottles driven neck down into the ground on a slant.
call civilization with the last tone and find the'white friend sitting motionless Amess ofhomey flowers planted without a plan butblooming cheerily from
in his seat-smoking:calmly.^,nil ; ;!:!;;... "••'•• ' ;• '!••' .-..-.•.; .;•• their helter-skelter peaces."The;jfence and house were;whitewashed. The
"Good music they have here,'' he remarks, drumming the table with his porch and steps scrubbed white.'-••:• •' • • / ' •
fingertips. .•:..:.! ; >i::yo \;n\ pj'.hi •• ••>••;.' •••:•• - ••• The front door stood open to the sunshine so tha/the floor of the front
Music. The great blobs of [Link] red emotion; have not touched him. room could finish drying-after its weekly scouring^t was Saturday. Every
He has only heard what I [Link] is faraway and I see him but dimlyacross thing clean from the front ga'us to the privy hous'e. Yard raked so that the
the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us. He is so pale with strokes ofthe rake would make apattern. Fresh,ftewspaper cut in fancy edge
his whiteness then and lam so;colored. on the kitchen shelves. \ •• f •:
Missie May was bathing herself m the galvanized washtub in the bed
At certain tirhes Lhave no'race, lam me. When I set my hat at a certain room. Her dark-brown skin glistened under the soapsuds that skittered
angle [Link] down [Link], Harlem City, feeling as snooty as down from her wash rag. Her stiff youngi(breasts thrust forward aggressively
the [Link] frontof the Forty^Second Street Library, for instance. So far as like broad-based cones with the tips lac'quered in black.
my feelings are concerned, Peggy Hopkins Joyce on the Boule Mich6 with She heard men's voices in the distance arid glanced at the dollar clock on
her gorgeous, raiment, [Link], knees knocking together in a'most the dresser. •/• .\
aristocratic manner, has nothing on me. The cosmic [Link]. I belong "Humph!' Ah'm way behind time t'day! Joe gqinter be heah 'fore Ah git
to norace nor time. I am the eternal feminine with its string of beads. mah clothes on ifAh don't makemaste." \
1 have no separate feeling about being ah American citizen and colored. I She grabbed the clean meal/ack at hand and dried herself hurriedly and
am merely, a fragment'of the^Great Soul that surges'within the .boundaries. began todress. But before sh/could tie her slippers, t^ere came the ring of
My country, rightor wrong.; . .•- n'rh 'Uu • • •: • • eUi. • singing metal on wood. Nine'times, i' . \
.Sometimes, 1 feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. Missie May grinned witl/delight.-She had not seen thebig tall man come
It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure;of my stealing in the gate andytreep^ up the walk grinning happily at the joyful
company? It's beyond me..'.!••• ins - <•-«».i -.*•.• /:I v.'•..;:• rnischief he was about;,fo commit. But she knew that it wasvher husband
But in the main, I feel like.a brown bag of:miscellany propped against a throwing silver dollars/in the door for her to pick up and pile: beside her
wall. Against a wall in company with other bags,: white, red and yellow. Pour plate at dinner. It was this way every Saturday afternoon. The nine dollars
out the contentsj and there, [Link] a'jurrible. of small things priceless hurled into the open door, he' scurried to a hiding place behind "the cape
and worthless. A. first-water; diamond, an,empty spool, bits ofbroken glass, jasmine bush and_,waited. .' \ .
lengths of string, a key, to:[Link] longisince crumbled away, a rusty knife- Missie May promptly appeared atthe door in mock alarm. \
blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail "Who dat chtinkin' money in mah do'way?" She demanded. No answer
bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two from the yardyShe leaped off the porch and began to search the shrubberyv
still a little fragrant. In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before She peeped under the porch and hung over the gate to look up and down\
you is the jumble it heldt—rsa much like the jumble in the bags, could they the road. While she did this, the man behind the jasmine darted to the
be emptied,' that all might [Link] in a single heap and the bags-refilled chinabenytree. She spied hirriarid gave chase. •-*.,. •. ;•
without altering the content [Link] greatly. A bit of colored glass more or "Nobody ain't gointer be chuckin' money at me and Ah not; do 'em
less would-not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled nothin' she shouted in mock anger. He ran around the house with Missie
them in the first-place—r-who knows? •.:.••.' ..*.'.• • May at his heels. She overtookhinvatthe kitchen door. He ran inside but
."'" " . 'l:.'" ': '"" 1928 coultfnot close it after him before she crowded in and locked with him in a
rough and tumble. Forseveral minutes the two were a furious mass of male
a^d female energy. Shouting;; laughing,, twisting, turning, tussling, tickling
epch other in the ribs; Missie May clutching onto Joe and Joe trying, but
5. A slender spear used by some South African sity and through the Latin Quarter. It is lined riot too hard, to get away. ' ••»*' -. .•:• f>:
with: cafes that were—and still are—much fre-j
/ I. The text is iron, the!printing in Story magazine (1933). "Gilded": lightly plated wit^BAwld or gold-
• oulevard St. Michel, a street on the Left
k of Paris running near the Sorbonne Univer
qucnted by Americans'in Paris. "Joyce": a sociality
and heiress, much photographed. colored foil.'Six-bits": seventy-five cents (two bitsare a quarter).
/ E. E. Cumi
Jean Toomi 1489

if every friend became his foe •:.. a hopeless case if^—listemthere^s a hell
he'd laugh-arid build a world with snow. of a good universe next doordet's'go *->' IS

Myfather movedthrough theys of we, 1944

singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child-was surethat spring,
danced when, she,1 [Link]; father;sing)- what if a much of a which;of a wind..-..
then let men kill which cannotshare, what if a much of a which of a'wind' >•••:*• -.
let blood and flesh be mud and mire, 1gives thetruth to summer's' lie;• - :- -. .-.-jri
scheming-imagine,[Link],- bloodies'with dizzying leaves the sun -; I'i^l'*1
freedom a drug that's bought and sold and yanks lmmortal'stars awry? .--.^ i
Blow king to b'eggarand queen' to seem- '' M"'"'
giving "to steal and cruel kihd,:-.^; (blow friend to fiertd-hlow space to time)
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind, —when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
to differ a disease of same, / the single secret will still be, rn^'n
conformthe pinnacle of am' . .
what if a keen of a lean wirid. flays
though dull were all:we [Link] bright, screaminghills with, sleet and-snow: 10
bitter all utterly things sweet, :
.strangles valleys by ropes [Link] ... .
maggoty minus\and diirribideath and stifles forests infwhite ago? .^ .
all we [Link]; ..: . Blow hope toterror;blow seeing to blind
•'•,./' -• • • ' (blow pity to envy and soul to,mind)\
and nothing quite iso least as truth —whose heartsare [Link] are trees,
—i say though hate were why men breathe- it's they shall cry hello to the spring \
because [Link] lived his soul
love is the whole ^and more than all what if a dawn of a doom of a dream - \
bitesthis universe in two, . .. .,, \
•it :, 1940
•'• iv«i!l peels forever out of his grave
/ •\
arid sprinkles nowhere with me and you? ' 20
.:<• -. •.: <k. /Blow soon to never and never to twice • '
pity this busy rnonstef,maniinkind (blow life to isn't:blow death to was)
—all nothing's onlyour hugest home;
pity this busy monster,manunkind, the most who die,the more we live

not. Progress is a comfortable disease: 1944

yourvictim(death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness ofhis littleness \l

—electrons deifyone razorblade \
into a mountainrahge;lenses-iexterid JEAN TOOIVIER
,-/ unwish through curving wherewheri'till uriwish , Ic^-l^"
returns on its unself. ' i;^-'": nm i • ,'•"*• \
J Aworld ofmade In 1915, the section ofNew York City [Link] had a black population ofabout
/ is not a world of obrri—pity poor flesh ! fifty thousand; by 1929 it had more than three times that number and constituted
the largest black urban, area in the nation. Among newcomers to this I'city within a
and [Link] starsarid'[Link] rieverthis city" were many talented men and women who made Harlem, an, intellectual and
fine specirneriof hypermagital'- :'- ••''-" :; artistic center. For Jean Toomer, this Harlem Renaissance spurred the writing of
one: acclaimed book, Cane (1923), whose strength lies,in the [Link] a
ultraomnipoterice. We doctors know ' presentation oftheimage ofthe simple, ruralblack and-the urban black sensibility
that arialyze's'the image. '' "'"'. •••"•/• -. <•' ....
1490 / Jean Toomer
Cane / 1491
Toomer was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up with his mother and his With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth, -
grandfather, who had been an important/^Louisiana politician during the Recon Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.
struction era. Toomer never knew his father. He graduated from high school and
attended several colleges—including the University of Wisconsin, the Massachusetts
College of Agriculture, the American College of Physical Training in Chicago, the The sawmill blows its;whistle, buzz-saws stop,
University ofChicago, and City College of New York—without earning a degree. He And [Link] the bud ofknoll and hill, !• 10
also held, briefly, avariety ofjobs in different parts of the country. Softsettling pollen where plowed lands fulfill
Toomer began writing when he was in his middle twenties. He published poems Their early promise ofa bumper crop.
and stories in several avantrgarde little magazines, among them Broom, the Little i • • <•, -. .;....... | . , .
Review, and Prairie, as wellas such;[Link] publications, as the Liberator, Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile
Crisis, and Opportunity. In ,1^2.1. Jie,.[Link] fqur months, as. superintendent of a Curls up, blue ghosts oftrees, tarrying low
small black school in Sparta, Georgia^ and there-T^his,.only, sustained encounter with Where only chips and stumps are left to show ,5
rural black people—absorbed [Link] from which Cane was distilled. The solid proof of former domicile.
Cane isa three-part work, incorporating shortstories, sketches, poems, and a play;
it has a general thernatie unity in its representation ofan alienated, questing black Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
man who tries to find himself through connection with the black folk heritage. Part Race memories ofking arid caravan,
I, set in rural Georgia, depicts the difficult yet noble life of the rural black popula High-priests, an ostrich, and ajuju-man,2
tion. Part II shows black urban life in Washington, D.C., and Chicago, where it has Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp. 20
been corrupted by white materialism. Part MI, the most autobiographical, shows an
African American intellectual teaching'in the South, trying to establish roots in a Their voices rise . . the pine trees are guitars,
style of life that he has never known: before but that is nevertheless supposed to be Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets ofrain . .
"his." Although the circumstances are specifically black, the theme of returning to 1 heir voices rise . . the chorus of the cane
one's roots, or trying to and'failing or even inventing the roots one never had, is Is caroling a vesper to the stars. .
persistent in modern fiction; we meet it in Katherine Anne Porter, Thomas Wolfe,
and Ernest Hemingway, among others. Cane isalso distinguished by its poetic, imag- Osingers, resinous and soft your songs
istic, evocative prose, its linguistic innovativeness* and, its method of assembling
pieces of writing like a mosaic. Toomer was attuned to modern literary method and Above the sacred whisper ofthe pines,
greatlyconcerned with beingliteraryin a recognizable sense-r-in contrast to Countee Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
Cullen, who used traditional forms, and to [Link] and Langston Bring dreams of Christ to. dusky cane-lipped throngs.
Hughes, who tried to create a specifically African American poetics.
Toomer continued to write, after, the appearance ofCane but-had increasing diffi Fern
culty in getting his work published.. At his death-he left unpublished short stories,
novels, plays, and an autobiography. :He spent much ofthe last forty years ofhis life Face flowed into her eyes. Flowed in soft cream foam and plaintive rip
looking for aspiritual community; for awhile he was [Link] the Russian mystic
George I. Gurdjieff, and in the194,0s he became a committed Quaker.
ples, in such away that wherever your glance may momentarily have rested
The text is that of the first edition (1923), as corrected in 1975.
tt ^mediately thereafter wavered in the. direction of her eyes. The oft
suggestion ofdown slightly darkened, [Link] shadow ofabird's wing might
the creamy brown color of her upper lip. Why, after noticing it, you sough
her eyes Icannot tell you Her nose was aquiline, Semitic. Ifyou have heard
From Cane1
aJev^sh Cantor3 sing,.if he has touched you and made your own sorrow
eem tr»via.l [Link] with his, you will know my feeling when IfoT
. ji- Georgia Dusk . , Wthe curves ofher profile, like mobile rivers, to their common delta. They
The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
were strange eyes. In this, that they sought nothing-that is, nothing thai
The setting sun, tod indolent to hold
was obvious and tangible and that one could see, and they gave the mfpres
A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
sion that nothing was to, be denied. When awoman seeks, you vriHhai
Passively darkens for night's barbecue,
observed, her eyes deny. Fern's eyes desired nothing that you could give her
here was no reason why they should withhold. Men saw her eyes and fooled
A feast of moon and rrieri and barking hounds^ themselves. Fern's eyes said to them that she was easy. When she was
An Orgy for some genius of the South theUvl.t
they felt hbound7?to K°°k, her> bUt
her (quite g0t their
unlike "° J'°hit
y fr°m iL *»d
and run withthen'
other°n"
girls)done,
fel
1. Of the book's three sections,'the "first and the thelynching ofa black woman's black lover by her as though it would take them alifetime to fulfill an obligation which 'they
lastjire
last are [Link].!Fern
L appears in the: first-
preceded immediately by the poem Geor-
white lover and his white,cohorts. Seventh Street
is the first sketch in the center sectiondevoted to
could find no:name for. They became attached to her, and hungegd after
L Thepoem Portrait in Georgia appears in Washington, D.C.,and Chicago.' 2. West African tribesman who controls the mag
section immediately preceding a story of ical tetish or charm, or "juju." 3. Male singer inreligious services.!
•
 149 Jean Toomer Cane /

finding the barest trace of what she might desire. As she grew up, new men throngs ofiHarlem. Better that she listen to; folk-songs at dusk in Georgia,
who came to town felt as almost everyone did who ever saw her: that they you would say, and sowould [Link], suppose she came up North and married. ..

would not be denied. Men were everlastingly bringing her their bodies. Evert, a doctoror a lawyer, say, one who would be sure to get along—that is, I -

Something inside of hergot tired'of them;Tguess,'for I am certain that for make moneyJYoiiiand I know, who have-had experience in such things, that
the life of her she could nottSll; why or howshe began to turn them off. A love [Link] athing like prejudice which! can be bettered by chariges of town.
man in fever is no trifling'thing:tb'send away. They began to leave her, Gould men-in Washington, Chicago;.or New York; morethan themen of
baffled and ashamed, yet vowing to-"themselves that some day theywould do Georgia, bring her something left vacant by the bestowal oftheir bodies?
some fine thing for her: send her candy, every week and not let her know Youand I who know men in these cities will have to say, they could not. See .'.
whom it came from, watch;6rit'f6rVher wedding-day arid give her a magnifi her out and out a prostitute along State Street [Link]. See her move
cent something with no name'pri it.'b'uy a house and deed it to her, rescue into a southern town where white men are more aggressive. See her become - --

her from some unworthy fellow .who had, tricked her into iriarrying him. As a white man's concubine .. -.-. Something.I must do for her. There was
you know, men are apt to idolize or fear that which they cannot understand, myself. What could I do for her? Talk, of course.. Push hack the:fringe of
especially if it be a woman. She. did not deny them, yet the fact was that pines upon new horizons. To what purpose? and what for? Her? Myself?
they were denied. A sort of superstition crept into their consciousness of Men in her case seem to lose their selfishness. I lost mine before I touched
her being somehow [Link],. .Being above them meant that she was not her. I askyou, friend (it makes no difference ifyou sit in the Pullman or the
to be approached by anyone, [Link]. Now,'a virgin in a small Jim Crow4 as the train crosses her road), what thoughts would come to
southern town is by no means the usual thing, if you will believe me. That you—that is, after you'd finished with the thoughts that leap into men's
the sexes were made [Link] is. the practice of the South. Particularly, black minds at the sightof a prettywoman who will not deny them;what thoughts
folks were made to mate. ..And/it is black folks whom I have been talking would come to you, had you seen her in a quick flash, keen and intuitively,
about thus far. What white men thought of Fern I can arrive at only by as she sat there on her porch when your train-thundered by? Would you
analogy. They let her alone. have got off at the next station and come back for her to take her where?
Would you have completely forgotten her as soon as you reached Macon,
Anyone, ofcourse, could see her, could see hereyes. Ifyou'walked up the Atlanta, Augusta, Pasadena, Madison, Chicago, Boston, or New Orleans?
Dixie Pike most any time ofday, you'd bemost like tosee herresting listless- Would you tell your wife or sweetheart about a girl you saw? Your thoughts
like on the railing of her porch, back propped-against a post, head tilted a -&-
can help me, and I would like to know. Something I would do for her:.-.-.
littleforward because there was a nail in the porch post just where her head
came which for some reason or other she never took the trouble to pull out. ,One evening I walked up the Pike on purpose, and stopped to say hello.
Her eyes, if it were sunset, rested idly where the sun, molten and glorious, Some of her family were about, but they moved away to make room for me.
was pouring down between the fringe of pines. Or maybe they gazed at the Damn if I knew how to begin. Would you? Mr. and Miss So-and-So, people,
gray cabin on the knoll from which an evening folk-song was coming. Per the weather, the crops, the new preacher, the frolic, the church benefit,
haps they followed a cow that had been turned loose to roam and feed oh rabbit and possum hunting, the new soft drink they had at old Pap's store,
cotton-stalks and corn leaves. Like as not they'd settle on some vague spot the schedule of the trains, what kind of town Macon was, Negro's migration
above the horizon, though hardlya trace of wistfulness would come to them. north, bollweevils, syrup, the Bible—to all these things she gave a yassur or
If it were dusk, then they'd Wait for the search-light ofthe evening train nassur, without further comment. I. began to wonder if perhaps my own
which you could see miles upthetrack befbreit flared across the Dixie Pike; "M: emotional sensibility had played one of its tricks on me. "Lets take a walk,"
close to herhome. Wherever they looked, you'd follow them arid then waver I at last ventured. The suggestion, coming after so long an isolation, was
back. Like her face, the Whole countryside seemed to flow into her eyes. novel enough, I guess, to surprise; But it wasnt that. Something told me
Flowed into them with the soft listless cadence of Georgia's South: Ayoung that men before me had said just that as a prelude to the offering of their
Negro, once, was looking at her, spellbourid, from the road. A white man bodies. I tried to tell her [Link] eyes. I think she understood. The thing
passing in a buggy had to flick him with his whip ifhe was to get by without from her that made my throat catch, vanished. Its passing left her visible in
running him over. 1first saw her on her porch. I was passing with a fellow a way I'd thought, but never seen. We walked down the Pike with people on
whose crusty numbness (I was from the North and suspected ofbeirig preju all the porches gaping at us. "Doesrit it make you mad?" She meant the row
diced and stuck-up) was melting as he found me warm. Tasked him who of petty gossiping people. She meant the world. Through a canebrake that
she was. "That's Fern," was all that Icould get from him. Some folks already I was ripe for cutting, the branch was reached. Undera sweet-gum tree, and
thought that I was'given to'nosing around; Ilet-it-go-at that, so far as ques where reddish leaves had dammed the creek a little, we sat down. Dusk,
tions were concerned; Butat first sight of herT felt as if 1heard a Jewish suggesting the almost imperceptible,procession of..giant trees, settled with a
cantor sing. As if hissingirigrdse'above the unheard chorus ofa folk-song- purple haze about the cane. I felt strange, as I always do in Georgia, particu
And I felt-bound-to her: I tod had my dreams: something1! would do for her: larly at dusk. I felt that thing's unseen to men were tangibly immediate. It
I have knocked about from town to town too much not to know the futility would'not have surprised rhe had I had vision. People have them in Georgia
of mere change of place. Besides, picture if you can, this cream-colored 4. In the segregated South, black persons were required to sit in the "Jim Crow" section of railway cars
solitary girl sitting at a tenement window looking down on the indifferent and were not allowed as passengers in the first-class "Pullman" lounges, or sleeping cars.
1494 / Jean Toomer
F. Scott Fitzgerald / 1495

more often than you would suppose. A black woman once saw the mother thrusting unconscious rhythms, black reddish blood into the white and
of Christ and drew her in charcoal on the courthouse wall . . . When one is whitewashed wood of Washington. Stale soggy wood of Washington.
on the soil of one's ancestors, most anything can come to one ... From Wedges rust in soggy wood ., .Split it! In two! Again! Shred it! . . the sun.
force of habit, I suppose, I held Fern in my arms—that is, without at first Wedges are brilliant in the suri; ribbons ofwet wood dry and blow away.
noticing it. Then my mind came back-to her. Her eyes, unusually weird and Black reddish blood. Pouring for crude-boned soft-skinned life, who set you
open, held me. Held God. He flowed in as I've seen the countryside-flow in: flowing? Blood suckers ofthe War would spin in a frenzy of dizziness ifthey
Seen men. I must have done something—what, I don't know, in the confu drank your blood. Prohibition,would put a stop to it. [Link] you flowing?
sion of my emotion. She sprang up. Rushed some distance from me. Fell to White and whitewash disappear in blood. Who set you flowing? Flowing
her knees, and began swaying, swaying. Her body was tortured with some down the smooth asphalt ofSeventh Street, in shanties, brick office build
thing it could not let out. Like boiling sap it flooded arms and fingers till ings, theaters, drug stores, restaurants, and cabarets? Eddying on the cor
she shook them as,if they, burned her. It found her throat, and spattered ners? Swirling like a blood-red smoke up where the buzzards fly in heaven?
inarticulately in plaintive, convulsive sounds, mingled with calls to Christ God would not dare to suck black red blood. ANigger God! He would duck
Jesus. And then she sang, brokenly. A Jewish cantor singing with a broken his head in shame and call for the Judgment Day. Who set you flowing?
voice. A child's voice, uncertain, or an old man's. Dusk hid her; I could hear
only her song. It seemed to me as though she were pounding her head in Money burns the pocket, pocket hurts,
anguish upon the ground. I rushed at her. She fainted in myarms. Bootleggers in silken shirts,
Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs,
There was talk about her fainting with me in the canefield. And I got one Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks.
or two ugly looks from town men who'd set themselves up to protect her. In 1923
fact, there was talk of making me leave town. But they never did. They kept
a watch-out for me, though. Shortly after, I came back North. From the
train window I saw her as I crossed her road. Saw her on her porch, head
tilted a little forward where the nail was,eyesvaguely focused on the sunset.
Saw her face flow into them, the countryside and something that I call God,
flowing into them . . . Nothing ever really happened. Nothing ever came to F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Fern, not even I. Something I would do for her. Some fine unnamed thing 1896-1940
. . . And, friend, you? She is still living, I have reason to know. Her name,
against the chance that you might happen down that way, is Fernie May
Rosen. In the 1920s..and 1930s F. Scott Fitzgerald was equally famous as a writer and as a
celebrity author whose lifestyle seemed to symbolize the two decades; in the 1920s
he stood for all-nightj>artying, drinking, and the pursuit of pleasure while in the
Portrait in Georgia 1930s he stood for the'gloomy aftermath of excess. His private life seemed in many
ways to symbolize the eras before and after the stock market crash of 1929. Babylon
Hair—braided chestnut, Revisited, written immediately^after the crash, is simultaneously a personal and a
coiled like a lyncher's rope, national story. \ _, • . •
Eyes—fagots, Fitzgerald was born and raised in a middle-class neighborhood in St. Paul, Min
Lips—old scars, or the first red blisters, nesota, descended on his mother's side froVsouthern'colonial landowners and legis
Breath—the last sweet scent of cane, lators, on his father's from Irish immigrants." TJie' family was not prosperous and it
And her slim body, white as the ash took an aunt's support to send him to aCatholic-boarding school in New Jersey in
of black flesh after flame. 1911. Two years later he entered Princeton Univensky, where he participated in
extracurricular literary and dramatic" activities, forming friendships with campus
intellectuals like the prominent critic Edmund Wilson whVwere to help him in later
i . . . .

i Seventh Street . ,
years. But he failed to make the'football team and felt the disappointment for years.
After three years ofcollege,Fitzgerald quit to join the army, but the, war ended before
Money burns the pocket, pocket hurtSj he saw active service. Stationed inMontgomery, Alabama, he met and courted Zelda
Bootleggers in silken shirts; ' h: Zayre, alocal belle whb rejected him. In 1919 he went to New York City,.determined
Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs,- ' to make afortune.a'nd win Zelda. Amazingly, he succeeded. Anovel he had begun in
Whizzing, whizzing down the street-car tracks. college, revised; and published in 1920 asThis Side ofParadise became animmediate
best-seller,.making its author rich and famous at the age of twenty-four. As one of
Seventh Street is a bastard of Prohibition and the War.5 A crude-boned, the earliest examples of anovel about college life, This Side ofParadise was accepted
soft^dnned wedge of nigger life breathing its loafer air, jazz songs and love, as the-'voice of the younger generation in a society increasingly oriented toward
youth. He combined the traditional narrative and rhetorical gifts of a (J^tiction
writer, it appeared, with a thoroughly modern sensibility. Aweek after^Fnovel
 *0 / Lancston Hughes The Negro Speaks of Rivers /

in this essay Hughes described the immense difficulties in store for the serious black
Bitter Fruit of the Tree artist "who would produce aracial art" but insisted on the need for courageous artists
to make the attempt. Other patrons appeared: Amy Spingarn financed his college
They said to my grandmother: "Please do not be bitter," education atLincoln University (Pennsylvania) and Charlotte Mason subsidized him
When they sold her first-born and let the second die; • in New York City between 1928 and 1930. The publication of his novel Not without
When they drove her husband till he took to the swamplands, Laughter in 1930 solidified his reputation and sales, enabling him to support himself.
And brought him home bloody and beaten at last. By the 1930s he was being called "the bard ofHarlem."
Theytold her, "It is better you should not be bitter, The Great Depression brought an abrupt end to much African American literary
Some must work and suffer so that we, who must, can live, activity, but Hughes was already apublic figure. In the activist 1930s he was much
. Forgiving is noble, you [Link] heathen bitter; absorbed in radical politics. Hughes and other blacks were drawn by the American
These are your orders: you are not to be bitter." Communist party, which made racial justice an important plank in its platform, pro
And they left her shack for their porticoed house. moting an image of working-class solidarity that nullified racial boundaries. He vis
ited the Soviet Union in 1932 and produced a significant amount of radical writing
up to the eve of World War II. He covered the Spanish Civil War for the Baltimore
They said to myfather: "Please do not be bitter," Afro-American in 1937. By the end of the decade he had also been involved in drama
When he ploughed arid planted a crop not his, and screenplay writing and had begun an autobiography, all the while publishing
When he weatherstripped a house that he could not enter, poetry. In 1943 he invented the folksy, street-wise character Jesse B. Semple, whose
And stored away a harvest he could not enjoy. common-sense prose monologues on race were eventually collected in four volumes;
They answered his questions: "It does not'concern you; in 1949 he created Alberta K. Johnson, Semple's female equivalent.
It is not for you to know, it is past your understanding, In the 1950s and 1960s Hughes published a variety of anthologies for children
All you need know is: you must not be bitter." and adults, including First Book ofNegroes (1952), The First Book ofJazz (1955),
and The Book ofNegro Folklore (1958). In 1953 he was called to testify before Sena
1939, 1980 tor Joseph McCarthy's committee on subversive activities (HUAC) in connection
with his 1930s radicalism. The FBI listed him as a security risk until 1959, and
during these years, when he could not travel outside the United States, Hughes
worked to rehabilitate his reputation as a good American by producing more-patri
LANGSTON HUGHES otic poetry. From 1960 tothe end ofhis life hewas again onthe international circuit.
Like all the Harlem Renaissance writers (many of whom were not Harlemites),
1902-1967 Hughes faced many difficulties in writing a self-proclaimed "Negro" poetry. Could
or should any individual speak for an entire "race"? If he or she tried to, wouldn't
Langston Hughes was the most popular and versatile of the many talented black that speech tend to homogenize and stereotype a diverse people? Harlem poets,
writers connected with the Harlem Renaissance. Along with Zora Neale Hurston aware that the audience for their poetry was almost all white, had to consider
and in contrast to Jean Toomer and Countee Cullen (who wanted to work with whether a particular image of black people would help or harm the cause. To the
purely literary patterns, whether traditional or experimental), he wanted to capture extent that they felt compelled to idealize black folk, their work risked lapsing into
the dominant oral and improvisatory traditions ofblack culture in written form racist primitivisrn. African American writers questioned, too, whether their work
Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, and in childhood, since his parents were should emphasize their similarities to ordifferences from whites. Hughes's response
separated, he lived mainly with his maternal grandmother. He did, however reside to these problems was to turn his focus from the rural black population toward the
intermittently both with his mother in Detroit and Cleveland, where he finished high city folk. The shift to the contemporary urban context freed Hughes from the con
school and began to write poetry, and with his father; who, disgusted with American cerns over primitivisrn; he could be a realist and modernist. He could use stanza
racism, had gone to Mexico. Like other poets in this era—T. S, Eliot, Hart Crane forms deriving from blues music andadapt the vocabulary ofeveryday black speech
Edgar Lee Masters, and Robert Frost-Hughes had a mother sympathetic to his to poetry without affirming stereotypes. And he could insist that whatever the differ
poetic ambitions and a businesslike father with whom he was in deep scarring ences between black and white Americans, all Americans were equally entitled to
conflict. 6 liberty, justice, and opportunity.
Hughes entered Columbia University in 1920 but left after a year to travel and The source of the poems printed here is Collected Poems (1994).
drift for several more: he shipped[out as amerchant,seaman, worked:at anightclub
in Pans (France) and as a busboyin Washington, D.C. All this time, however he
was writing and publishing poetry, chiefly in the two important African American The Negro Speaks of Rivers
periodicals Opportunity and the Crisis. Eleven of Hughes's poems were published in
Alain Locke's pioneering anthology, The New Negro (1925), and he was also well I've known rivers:
represented in Countee Cullen's 1927-anthology, Caroling Dusk. Carl Van Vechten I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
one of the white patrons ofAfrican American writing, helped get The Weary Blues' flow of human blood in human veins.
Hughes's first volume of poems, published in 1926. It was in this year, too, that his
important essay Tlte Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain appeared in the Nation- My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
 1732 / Langs-ton-Hughes I, Too / 1733

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. He did a lazy sway. . . .
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. To the tune o' those:Weary Blues.
I looked uponthe Nile1 and raised the pyramids above it. With his ebony hands on each ivory key.
I heard the singing ofthe Mississippi when Abe Lincoln He made that poor piano moan with melody.
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy O Blues!
bosomturn all golden iri the sunset Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
I've known rivers: Sweet Blues!
Ancient, dusky rivers.' M
Coming from a black man's soul.
0 Blues!
My soul has grown deep like the rivers. In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
1921, 1926 "Ain't got nobody in all this world,
Ain't got nobody but ma self.
I's gwine to quit ma frownin'
Mother to Son
And put ma troubles on de shelf."
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
Well, son, 1*11 tell you: He played a few chords then he sang some more—
Life for riie airi't been no crystal stair. "I got de Weary Blues 25
It's had tacks [Link],
And I can't be satisfied.
And splinters,
Got de Weary Blues
And boards torn up,
And can't be satisfied—
And places with no carpet on the floor— 1 ain't happy no mo'
Bare.
And I wish that 1 had died." 30
But all the,time
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
I'se been a-climbin'on,. *' The stars went out and so did the moon.
And reachin' landin's,
•And turnin' corners, The singer stopped playing and went to bed.
i;.- While the Weary Blues echoes through his head
And sometimes goin' in the dark
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.
Where there ain't been no light. 35

So boy, don't you turn back. i I 1932

Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
' Don't you fall now—
For I'se still goiri'; honey, • " • I, Too
I'se stillclimbin', ','""''
And life for me airi't been no crystal stair. I, too, sing America.
20

1922, 1926 I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
The Weary Blues But I laugh,
And eat well,
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, And grow strong.
Rocking backand forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play. ; Tomorrow,
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night I'll sit at the table
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light When company comes. 10
He did a lazy sway. . . . ' Nobody'll dare
1. The Nile River, siteof ancient Egyptian civili- Say to me,
civilization, flows from Turkey through Syria and
zatj^^L-mpties into the Mediterranean Sea. The Iraq. The Congo flows from the Republic of the "Eat in the kitchen,"
'^^•c's Riv^r, cradle of ancient Babylonian Congo in centralAfrica into the AtlanticOcean. Then.
•i I
'34 / Langston Hughes Vagaboni 1735

Besides, Git on back therein the night,

They'll see how beautiful I am You ain't white.
And be ashamed—
The bright stars scattereverywhere.
I, too, am America. Pine wood scent in the evening air. 40

1932
A nigger night,
A nigger joy.

J am your son, white man!

Mulatto
A little yellow
/ am your son, white man! Bastard boy. 45

1927
Georgia dusk
And the turpentine woods.
One of the pillars of the temple fell.
Song for a Dark Girl
You are my son!
Like hell! Way Down South in Dixie1
(Break the heart of me)
The moon over the turpentine woods. They hung my black younglover
The Southern night To a cross roads tree.
Full of stars,
Great big yellow stars. Way Down South in Dixie
What's a body but a toy? (Bruised body high in air)
Juicy bodies' I asked the white Lord Jesus
Of nigger wenches What was the use of prayer.
Blue black'
Against black fences. Way Down South in Dixie
O, you little bastard boy, (Break the heart of me)
What's a body but a toy? Love is a naked shadow
The scent of pinewood stings the soft night air. On a gnarled and naked tree.
What's the body of your mother? 1927
Silver moonlight everywhere. 20

What's thebody of your mother? Vagabonds

Sharp pine scent in the evening air.
A nigger night,
We are the desperate
A nigger joy,
Who do not care,
A little yellow
The hungry
Bastard boy. Who have nowhere
To eat,
Naw, you ain't my brother. No place to sleep,
Niggers ain't mybrother. The tearless
Not ever.
Who cannot
Niggers ain't my brother. Weep.
The Southern night is full of stars,
Great big yellow stars. 1947
O, sweet as earth,
Dusk dark bodies
Give sweet birth 35 1. This ironic refrain is the last Ink- ol Dixie, the rali>in- ... •• patriotism during u:
To little yellow bastard boys. the popular minstrel song, probably composed by after the (, i\ il W.
Daniel D. Emmett (1815-1904), which became
1736 / Langston Hughes Madam's Calling Cards / 1737

It was too much,

Genius Child Nearly broke me down.

This is a song for the genius child. I said, Madam,

Sing it softly, for the song is wild. Can it be
Sing it softly as ever you can— You trying to make a
Lest the song get out of hand. Pack-horse out of me?

Nobody loves a geniuschild. She opened her mouth.

She cried, Oh, no!
Can you love an eagle, You know, Alberta,
Tame or wild? I love you so! 20

Can you love an eagle,

Wild or tame? I said, Madam,
Can you love a monster That may be true—
Of frightening name? But I'll be dogged
If I love you!
Nobody loves a genius child.
1949

Kill him—and let his soul run wild!

1947 Madam's Calling Cards

I had some cards printed
Refugee in America The other day.
They cost me more
There are words like Freedom Than I wanted to pay.
Sweet and wonderful to say.
On my heart-strings freedom sings I told the man
All day everyday. I wasn't no mint,
But I hankered to see
There are words likeLiberty My name in print.
That almost make me cry.
If you had known what I knew MADAM JOHNSON,
You would knowwhy. ALBERTA K.
He said, Your name looks good
1947
Madam'd that way.

Madam and Her Madam Shall I use Old English

Or a Roman letter?
I worked for a woman, I said, Use American.
American's better.
She wasn't mean—
But she had a twelve-room
House to clean.
There's nothing foreign
To my pedigree:
Had to get breakfast, Alberta K. Johnson—
American that's me. 20
Dinner, and supper, too—
Then take care of her children 1949
When I got through.

Wash, iron, and scrub,

Walk the dog around—
 Democracy /
17* 7 Langston Hughes

Silhouette Note on Commercial Theatre

Southern gentle lady, You've taken my blues and gone—

Do not swoon. You sing 'em on Broadway
They've just hung a black man And you sing 'em in Hollywood Bowl,
In the dark of the moon. And you mixed 'em up with symphonies
And you fixed 'em
They've hung a black man So they don't sound like me.
To a roadside tree Yep, you done taken my blues and gone.
In the dark of the moon
For the world to see You also took my spirituals and gone.
How Dixie protects You put me in Macbeth and Carmen Jones
Its white womanhood. And all kinds of Swing Mikados
And in everything but what's about me—
Southern gentle lady, But someday somebody'll
Be good! Stand up and talk about me,
Be good! And write about me—
Black and beautiful— 15

1949 "'*> And sing about me,

And put on plays about me! <

Visitors to the Black Belt I reckon it'll be

Me myself!
You can talk about
Across the railroad tra'cks— Yes, it'll be me. 20

To me it's here
On this side of the tracks. 1949

You can talk about Democracy

Up in Harlem—
To me it's here
Democracy will not come
In Harlem.
Today, this year
Nor ever
You can say Through compromise and fear.
Jazz on the South Side—
To me it's hell
I have as much right
On the South Side:
As the other fellow has
To stand
Kitchenettes
On my two feet
With no heat
And own-the-land.
And garbage
In the halls.
I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Who're you, outsider? Tomorrow is anotherday.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
Ask me who am I.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.
1949
Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.
 1740 / John Steinbeck The Leader of the People / 1741

I live here, too.

I want freedom 20 The Leader of the People
Just as you.

1949
On Saturday afternoon Billy Buck, the. ranclvhand, raked together the
last of the old years' haystack and pitched small forkfuls over the wire fence
to a few mildly interested cattle. High in the air small clouds like puffs of
cannon smoke were driven eastward by the March wind. The wind could be
heard whishing in the brush on the ridge crests, but no breath of it pene
JOHN STEINBECK trated down [Link]-cup.
The little boy; jody, emerged from the house eating a thick piece of but
1902-1968 tered bread. He saw Billy working on the last of the haystack. Jody tramped
down scuffling his shoes in a way he had been'told was destructive to good
Most of John Steinbeck's fiction concerns his native California and the Great shoe-leather. A flock,of white pigeons flew put of the black cypress tree as
Depression. Among influential novels from the period between the wars, his Pulitzer Jody passed, and circled the tree and landed again. A half-grown tortoise-
Prize-winning novel about "Okies" (Oklahoma sharecroppers who were forced off shell cat leaped from the bunkhouse porch, galloped on stiff legs across the
their land by droughts beginning in 1934), The Grapes ofWrath (1939), was one of road, whirled and galloped back again,: Jody picked up a stone to help the
the most important. It combined naturalist and symbolist'techniques to depict his game along, but he was [Link], for the cat was under the porch before the
characters' plights and expressed compassion, outrage, and admiration in response stone could be discharged. He threw the stone into the cypress tree and
to their sufferings. . '/
He was born and raised not far from San Francispb in the Salinas Valley region of started the white pigeons on another whirling flight.
wine and artichokes. His father was county treasurer, his mother a former school Arriving at the used-up haystack, the boy leaned against the barbed wire
teacher. In the family library he found and read such standard authors as Milton, fence. "Will that be all of it, [Link].u think?" he asked.
Dostoevsky, Flaubert, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy. In high school he was a The middle-aged ranch-hand stopped his careful raking and stuck his. fork
good student, president of his graduating class, and active in athletics and on the into the ground. He took off his black hat and smoothed down his hair.
school newspaper. He began college atStanford University as an English major but "Nothing left of it that isn't soggy from ground moisture," he said. He
left school in 1925 and spent the next five years traveling, reading, and writing. replaced his hat and rubbed his dry leathery hands together.
In 1930 he married (the first of three times) and moved to Pacific Grove, Cali "Ought to be plenty mice," Jody suggested.
fornia, where his father provided a house and small allowance to support him. He "Lousywith them," said Billy. "Just crawling with mice."
achieved success in 1935 with Tortilla Flat, his third novel. It was an episodic, "Well, maybe, when you get all through,\I could call the dogs and hunt
warmly humorous treatment of the Hyes of Salinas^/alley paisanos—ethnically mixed
.Mexican-Indian-Caucasians—whose earthy, uninhibited lives provided a colorful the mice." / \
contrast (in Steinbeck's view).to the valley's "respectablesociety." The subject of his "Sure, I guess you could," said Billy Buck. He lifted a forkful of the damp
second successful novel, In/Dubious Battle (1936), was\fruit pickers' strike. The ground-hay and ,fhrew it into the air. Instantly"three mice leaped out and
decency of the exploited workers is played off, on one side, "against the cynical land burrowed frantically under the hay again. \
owners and their vigilantes and, on the other, against the equally^cynical Communist Jody sighed/with satisfaction. Those plump, sleek, arrogant mice were
organizers who try to use the workers' grievances for their own purposes. His sympa : doomed. For- eight months they had lived and multiplied in the haystack.
thy for the underdog was shown again in Of Mice and Men (1937), about two itiner They had been immune from cats, from traps, from poison and from Jody.
ant ranch hands, and in The Grapes of Wrath, about the Joad family, who, after They had grown smug in their security, overbearing and fat. Now thetime
losing their land, migrated westward to California on U.S. Highway 66 looking for, of disasterhad come; they would notsurvive another dayV • ; -, ...i
but not finding, a better life.
After World War II Steinbeck's work became more sentimental and more heavily . Billy looked up at the top of the hills that surrounded the ranch. "Maybe
symbolic. Postwar prosperity led to suburbia, television^ and the explosion ofahighly you better ask your father before you do it," he suggested. \ i
commercialized mass culture, from which he turned in disgust. The Leader of the "Well, whereis he? I'll ask him now." \
People expresses his sense that America's best times are past and locates value inthe "fie rode up to the ridge ranch after dinner: He'll be back pretty soon." i
story's socially marginal characters—a child, an old man, and [Link]. In apre Jody slumped against the fence post.. "I don't think he'd care."
war automobile with his poodle, named Charley, he. toured America; the title of his : /As Billy went back to his work he said ominously, "You'd better ask him
account, Travels with Charley in Search ofAmerica (19,62), again reveals this convic anyway. You know how he is."
tion that"America" was now hard to find. Hewon theNovel Prize in 1963. / Jodydid know. His father, Carl Tiflin, insisted upon giving permission for
The text is that of Vie Red Pony (1945). / anything that was done on the ranch, whether it was important or not. Jody
sagged farther against the post until he was sittingon the ground. He looked
up at the little puffs of wind-driven cloud. "Is it like to rain, Billy?"
"Il might. 1he wind's good for it, but not strong enough." ^^^
"Well, 1hope it don't rain until after 1kill those damn mice." H^^^ed
 THEME FOR ENGLISH B
By Langston Hughes
The instructor said,

Go home and write

a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?

I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me

at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me NOT like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you're older—and white—
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

1951
 i50 / John Steinbeck Countee Culli 1751

(•
Jody got up from [Link]. "I'll wait outside for you, sir. I'vegot a good Jody felt very sad. "If you'd like a glass of lemonade I could make it for
stick for those! mice.":., u-.., mAinv •:•••.-'• •:•••• •'''<'• ' .•<-.• •>.• • /"' you
He waited bythe gate until the old man came out on the porch. "Let's go Grandfather was about to refuse, and' then he sa^Jtfdy's face. "That
dovyn and kill the mice now," Jody called', uuti: . • •.:,•. ,!•.. would be nice," he said. "Yes, it woulH-bje nice to drifik a lemonade."
. ."[Link] I'll justsitin thesun,: JodyJYou go killthe mice." ;•..-*/« : r ••.-.* Jody ran into the kitchen "where, 'his rnother was wiping the last of the
"You can usemyistiek if you like."i .i.-.. •. ,.-«„ . ••.-.: n.. • ... I. .!••;•:: . ,t,.., breakfast dishes. "Can I have a lemontp-niake'laJenionade for Grandfather?"
;"Novt.;I'lljust sit here awhile;".-•;,: u& ii: brtwiqw. .•-.,-.. •: .,—1.,.;...,;;: His mother mimicked—"And^another lemonvtomake a lemonade for
i•
Jody turned disconsolately away,i and walked down toward the old hay^ you .S
\
stack.; (He tried. to whip [Link] enthusiasm with* thoughts of the fat juicy "No, ma'am. I don't,,waht one.7'
mice. He beat the ground with his flaih:The,dogs! coaxed:and whined about "Jody! You're sick!" Then she stopped suddenly. "Take a lemon out of the
him, but he could not go. [Link] house hecould see:Grandfathersitting cooler," she^sa'id softly. "Here, I'll, reach, the squeezer down to you."
on the porch, looking smalhandthin and blackiS:-.; ,-d •..••: •• ••.'..' I::;-, •: . , v.. I "• • -• i\ 1945
[Link] up and went [Link] on the steps at'the old man's feet;:. I •-;.• . ....,

"Back already? Pid you kill:the mice?" y. . ••!••.-. .- i ..•fV:;(

"No, sir. I'll kill them some other day^'V .. i ':- • • >.':

The morning flies buzzed closeto the" ground and the ants dashed about
in front of the steps.-TJie-heavy, smell of sage'slipped down the;hill. The
porch boards grew;warm\'inthe:sunshine.;' ... • . ;- ,•• ;i,:.i '• a .,. - >:; COUNTEE CULLEN
Jody hardly knew when grandfather started to talk. "I shouldn't stay here,
feeling the way I do.-' Heexamined his strong old hands. "I feel as. though
the crossing wasn't^ worth doing." His;eyes moved up the side-hill and
stopped oh a :[Link].:perched on a. dead limb. "I tell those old The African American artists associated withthe Harlem Renaissance faced difficult
stories, but they're:riofc what Twant to tell. I only know how. I want people to problems as they attempted to enunciate a collective identity for themselves and
feel when I tell them. / \ •!. . ..- . -.r, ..-,. • -. ; their people. Should they demonstrate excellence by working within traditional art
forms, or should they develop new forms specifically derived from black experience?
"It wasn't Indians [Link] important,.nor adventures, nor even getting Should they write (or paint, or sing)only about their experiences as black people, or
:. i out here. It was a whole-bunch of people made into one big crawling beast. should they write like Americans, or about universal issues? If the answer was always
And .'1 was. the head. Jt-was: westering and westering. Every man wanted to write as blacks, could it be maintained that there was just one black experience
something for himself, but the big beast that was all of them wanted only common to all African Americans? Countee Cullen, a black middle-class New
westering. I was theMeader, [Link] I hadri-1 been there, someone else would Yorker, experienced these issues in a particularly divisive fashion: he wanted to be a
have been the head. The'thing had to hav6,a head. traditional poet but felt it his duty to articulate a black experience that was not
"Under1 the little bushes the shadows were black at white noonday. When entirely his own. ..'.'..
we saw the mountains at last,-we cried-^all ofus. But it wasn't getting here He was the adopted son of a Methodist minister and enjoyed a secure, comfortable
that mattered,, it was movement and westering^- ..- ,. : childhood. Heattended New York public schools, andtraveled to Europe. Heearned
"We carried life but here and set it [Link]^ way those ants carry eggs. a Phi Beta Kappa key at New York University, where [Link] his B.A. in 1925;
And I was the leader. The westering was as big as God; and the slow steps he took an M.A. at Harvard in 1926. He returned to New York as a public-school
teacher. His first bookof poems, Color, appeared in 1925, when he wasonly twenty-
. •! that made the movement piled up and piled up\until the continent was two. His youth, his technical proficiency, and the themes of the poems—truth,
crossed. \ . ,
beauty, and goodness, in the world of time and circumstance—established him as
;"Then we came down to the sea, anditwas done.;\He stopped and wiped the "black Keats," a prodigy.
h is eyes until therims,were red. "That's what I should be telling insteadof Cullen's anthology of black poetry; Caroling Dusk (1927), was an important docu
stories. ment for Harlem Renaissance poets. He prefaced his selection with the assertion
X athim. "Maybe
•:When Jody spoke,;.Grandfather started and looked down that theforms ofEnglish poetry, nottranscription's of black dialects ormilitant mani
hcould lead the ^people some day," Jodyisaid.'. ; X ., festos, were the proper tools of the1 artist. In this-idea he went counter to the prac
/ The old man smiled. "There's, no place' to:go. There's the ocean to stop tices of such other Harlem writers as Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes; he
you. There 's a line of old men along the shore hating the ocean because it wanted to be a poet as he understood poets to be. Nevertheless, the titles of his
/ stopped them." books—Color as well as Copper Sun in 1927 and The Ballad of the Brown Girl in
"In boats I mighty sir."; .- • * •,;. •,:.-• •* , • > 1928—showed that, like Claude McKay, he felt a responsibility to write about being
blackeven if he did so in modes alien to black folk [Link] he explained in the
"No place to go, Jody. Every place is taken. But that's not the worst—no, preface to Caroling Dusk, it was not easy to be both a black and an American.
not the worst. Westering has died out of the people. Westering isn't a hun Cullen won a Guggenheim fellowship to complete Tlie Black Christ in 1929 and
ger any more. It's all done..Your father is right. It is finished." He laced his published a novel, One [Link] Heaven, in 1932. He'succeeded in his aim' of becom
fingers on his knee and looked at them. .=• . ..,., . . .- >.. ,. •;• ,.-, ing a literary man recognized for his skill as a traditional artist; it is an important
-..••£ 1752 / Countee Cullen
Heritage / 1753

partof his achievement that in an; era when American society was far more racially
segregated than it is nowhe worked to bring black themes to the awareness of white
readers who admired him because he worked with poetic modes that they found Heritage
familiar. • \ ..•..-
The text of From the Dark Tower is that of Copper Sun (1927); the text of the What is Africa to me:
other poemsincluded here is that of Color (1925). Copper sun or scarlet sea, > •
Jungle star or jungle track, ;
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Yet Do I Marvel Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind, One three centuries removed
And did He stoop to quibble could tellwhy From thescenes hisfathers loved,
The little buried mole continues blind, Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must some day die, What is Africa to me?
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus 5
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare So I lie, who all day long
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus' Want no sound except the song
To struggle up a never-ending stair. Sung by wild barbaric birds
Inscrutable His ways are, and-immune Goading massive jungle herds,
To catechism by a mind too strewn |0 Juggernauts' of flesh that pass
With petty cares to slightly understand Trampling tall defiant grass
What awful brain compels His awful hand. Where young forest lovers lie,
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: Plighting troth beneath the sky.
To make a poet black, and bid him sing! So I lie, who always hear,
Though I cram against my ear 20

1925 Both my thumbs, and keep them there,

Great drums throbbing through theair.
So I lie, whose fount ofpride,
Incident Dear distress, andjoyallied,
Is my somber flesh and skin, 25
Once riding in old Baltimore, With the dark blood dammed within
Heart-filled, head-filled withglee, Like great pulsing tides of wine'
M I saw a Baltimorean That, I fear, must burst the fine
Keep looking straight at me. Channels ofthe chafing net
Where theysurge and foam and fret. 30
NowT was eight arid very small,
And he,was no whit bigger, Africa? A book one thumbs
And so I smiled, but he poked but Listlessly, till slumber comes.
His tongue, and calledme, "Nigger." :
Unremembered are her bats
Circling through the night, her cats
I saw the whole of Baltimore Crouching in the river reeds,
From May until Decerriber; Stalking gentle flesh that feeds
Of all thethings that happened there By the river brink; no more
That's, all that I remember. Does the bugle-throated roar
Cry that monarch claws have leapt
1925 From the scabbards where they slept; 40
Silver snakes that once a year
Doff the lovely coats you wear,
Seek ho covertin your fear
1. Tantalus and Sisyphus are figures in Greek
Lest a mortal eye should see;
then instantly snatched away. Sisyphus's; torment
mythology who were punished in Hades for was to roll a heavy stone to the top ofa hill and,
^^^t committed on earth. Tantalus's punish- I. The juggernaut is asacred Hindu idol dragged demanding blind sacrifice, herest
after it rolled back down, to repeat the ordeal on a huge car in the path of whichdevoteeswere with the
^^•vas to be offered food and water that was perpetually.'.
believed to throw themselves—hence any power
image of elephants.
 • I

'Gountee Cullen From the Dark Tower /

175*

What's your nakedness to me? Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, .1

Here no leprous flowers rear So I make [Link] boast; •.»•
Fierce corollas2 in the air; Jesus of the twice-turned cheekl.. -••••< i-.- •
/,
Here no bodies sleek;and wet, Lamb of God, although I speak \->.\
Dripping mingled irain and sweaty Withmy mouththus, in my heart 'd-J
Tread the savage measures of ; ••• i Do I play a doublepart. .«•*. ! ."
Jungle boys and girlsjn love. Ever at Thy glowing altar
What is last year's: snow to me, Must my heart growsick and falter,
Last year's: anything? The tree Wishing He I served were black,
Budding yearly must forget Thinking then it would not lack
How its past [Link] set—r Precedent of pain to guide it,
Bough and blossom, flower, fruit, Let who would or might deride it;
Even what shy bird with mute Surely then this flesh would know
Wonder at her travail there, Yours had borne a kindred woe.
Meekly labored in its hair. Lord, I fashion dark gods, too,
One three centuries-removed Daring even to give You
From the scenes hisfathers loved, Dark despairing features where,
Spicygrove, cinnamon tree, Crowned with dark rebellious hair;
What is Africa to me? Patience wavers just so much as
Mortal grief compels, whiletouches
So I lie, who find no peace Quick and hot, of anger, rise
Night or day, no slight release ,-. To smitten cheek and weary eyes.
From the unremittant beat Lord, forgive me if my need
Made bycruel padded feet ,J- .. Sometimes shapes a human creed.
Walkingthrough my body's street. All day long and all night through, '
Up and down they go, and back,. One thing Only must I do: "• '*'•' '
Treading out a jungle track. Quench mypride and coolmyblood,
So I lie, who never quite Lest I perish in theflood.
Safely sleep from rain at night— Lest a hidden ember set ! ;
I can never rest, at all Timber that I thoughtwas wet
When the rain .begins to fall; Burning like the dryest flax,
Like a soul [Link] with pain Melting like the merest wax,
1 must match its weird refrain; Lest the grave restore its dead.
Ever must I twist and squirm, : Not. yet has my heart or head
Writhing like a baited worm, In the least way realized
While its primal measures drip They and I are civilized.
Through my body, crying, "Strip!
Doff this new exuberance. 1925
Come and dance, the Loyer's Dance!"
In an old remembered way
Rain works on me night and day. From the Dark Tower

Quaint, outlandish heathen gods i We shall not always plant while others reap
Black men fashion out of rods, The. golden increment of bursting fruit, ....,
Clay, and brittle bits: of stone, Not always countenance, abject and mute,
In a likeness like their own, . •.* •. That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
My conversion came, high-priced; .Not everlastingly while others sleep.,: 5

I belong to Jesus Christ, i Shall we beguile their [Link]-mellow flute,

Preacher of humility; •;, Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
Heathen gods are naught to me. •We were notmade eternally-to weep.

2. Thewhorl ofpetals forming theinner envelope of yesteryear?" from u\e poem Grand Testament
of a flower.
bythe i5th-century French poet Francois Villon. 4."'In his Sermon ori the Mount (Matthew 5.39), Jesus declared that when struck on one'cheek, one
3. An echo of the lament "Where are the snows should turn the other check rather than strike back.
;;
 1756 / Richard Wright
Richard Wright / 1757

The night whose sable breast relieves the stark, sis with existential philosophy—in brief, it was at once a powerful social statement
White stars is no less lovely being dark, . and a complex workof literaryart. , -. .
And there are budsthatcannot bloom at all Wright was born near Natchez, Mississippi. When he was five, his father aban
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall; doned the family—Wright, his younger brother,, and his mother—and for the next
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds, ten years Wright was raised by a series of relatives in Mississippi. By 1925, when he
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds. went to Memphis on his own, he had moved twenty times. Extreme poverty, a con
stantly interrupted education that never went beyond junior high school, and the
1927 religious fundamentalism of his grandmother, along with the constant experiences
of humiliation and hatred in a racially segregated South: all these contributed to
Wright's growing sense..that the hidden anger of black people was justified and that
Uncle Jim only by acknowledging and expressing it could they move beyond it. The title of
Native Son made thepoint thatthe United States isas much thecountry of black as
"White folks is white," says uncle Jim; ofwhite; thestory showed that blacks had been deprived of theirinheritance.
"A platitude," I sneer; Two years after moving to Memphis, Wright went north to Chicago. Here he took
And then I tell him so is milk, a series ofodd jobs and then joined the WPA Writers' Project (a government project
And the froth upon his beer. ofthe Depression years to help support authors) as a writer ofguidebooks and as a
director ofthe Federal Negro Theater. He began to study Marxist theory, contribut
His heart walled up with bitterness, ing poetry toleftist literary magazines,and joining the Communist Party in 1932. By
He smokes his pungent pipe, 1935 he had become thecenter ofa group ofAfrican American Chicago writers and
And nods at me as if to say, had started to write fiction. He was/hfluepced by the naturalistic fiction ofJames T.
"Young fool, you'll soon be ripe!" Farrell, whose study ofsociology at the University ofChicago had helped give struc
ture to his popular Studs Lonigah trilogy about working people ofIrish descent.
I have a friend who eats his heart Wright moved to New York i/1937 to writeTpr the New York Writers' Project and
Away with grief of mine, as a reporter on the Communist Daily Worker. In 1938 he published Uncle Tom's
Who drinks myjoy as tipplers drain Children, a collection of four short stories. (An earlier novel, Lawd Today, was not
Deep goblets filled [Link].
published until after his d,<*ath.) Set in the rural South, the stories center on racial
conflict and physical violence. Wright's theme ofthedevastating effect ofrelentless,
institutionalized hatred^-and humiliation on the black male's psyche was paramount
I wonder why here at his side, in all of them. / \.
Face-in-the-grass with him, After Native Son, Wright turned to autobiographical writings that eventuated in
I
I
:
I
My mind should stray the Grecian urn1 Black Boy, published in 1945. Many consider this to be his best book, and such
5 ] To muse on uncle Jim. .., writers as Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin took it as a model for their own work
1927
in the 1950s and/1960s. ACommunist activist in the early 1940s, Wright became
increasingly disillusioned and broke completely with the partyr'in 1944. Visiting
I. An allusion to Ode on aGrecian Urn by the British Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821). Culle France in 1946'j he was warmly received by leading writers and "philosophers. In
was particularly fond of the poetry of Keats. 1947 he settle^ permanently in that country, where he was perceive^.from the first
as one of the/important experimental modernist prose writers and was\ranked on a
level with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. An existential novel, The Outsider
(1953), was followed by five more books: two novels and three collections oflectures,
travel writings, and sociopolitical commentary. The collection Eight Men, from
RICHARD WRIGHT which the story printed here is taken, was the last literary project he worked on. and
appeared the year after his death.
1908-1960 Wright's immersion in Marxist doctrine gave him tools for representing society as
divided into antagonistic classes and run for the benefit of the few. But in each of
With the 1940 publication of Native Son Richard Wright became the first African his works he portrays individuals who, no matter how they are deformed and brutal
American author of-a..best-seller. Native Son is anunebmpromising study of an Afri ize^ by oppression and exploitation, retain a transcendent spark of selfhood. Ulti
can American underclass~youth who is goaded tb; brutal violence by the oppression, mately, it is in this spark that Wright put his faith. His writing from first to last
hatred, and incomprehension of tKewhiteworld. The sensational story disregarded affirmed the dignity and humanity of society's, outcasts without romanticizing them,
conventional wisdom about how ;black authors-should approach a white reading and indicted those who had cast them out. As Ralph Ellison expressed it, Wright's
audience. Bigger Thomas, the-main character, embodied.,everything that such an example "converted the American Negro impulse toward self-annihilation and 'going
audience might fear and detest, butby situating the point ofview within this charac underground' into awill to confront the world" and to "throw his findings unasham
edly into the guilty conscience of America."
ter's consciousness Wright forced readers to see the world through Bigger's eyes and The text was first published in Harper's Bazaar (1939) under the tkk Almos' a
^•k>s to understand him. The novel was structured like ahard-boiled detective storyi Man. Under its present title it appeared in Eight Men (1961), a posthJHks collec
^^ntained layers of literary allusion and symbol, and combined Marxist social analy-1 tion o( Wright's short fiction. ^^